NBC Olympic coverage

Mike's a little tired of how Bob Costas and NBC are handling some of the Olympic coverage. Gotta agree. The opening ceremonies were, true to NBC form, full of commercials, interruptions, too much talking and far too many camera angle cuts. Let me watch the whole, big picture, not so many close-ups!

Are we really at the point where the average american can’t deal with a few minutes of artistic expression lacking explanation without losing their minds and flipping the channel?

I really hope this was a rhetorical question, Mike - of course the answer is YES.

But my beef with NBC goes deeper than the opening ceremonies. Both Saturday and Sunday mornings, I flipped NBC on to find...childrens' programming and news shows. Say what? NBC paid, what, billions of dollars for the broadcast rights, and they're squandering them? US East Coast morning is Torino afternoon/early evening. Show me some live coverage! I don't want to see selected pieces of certain events timeshifted 12 hours - show me all the athletes who are strong competitors, live! Stick with the whole event, don't cut away after 30 minutes to come back in an hour. Do something to hold my attention. It was only by sheer luck that I was flipping around and caught the USA women vs. Germany hockey game on USA Network.

First Olympics broadcast in HD, and the one HDTV that I have hooked up doesn't have an HD tuner built in like my other one does, nor does it have an HD-ready cable box hooked up to it.