You need to live in the country that invented the automobile assembly line, put the first man on the moon and made the iPhone a reality to see the worst broadcasting of the Olympics in the civilized world. That's right, here at home, in our beloved United States we must go through the worst delayed, tortured and commercially spoiled televised event during all Olympiads, including this 21st edition from Vancouver. I would have loved to see a live transmission of today's men downhill, but I had to resort to going online and watching it, via text/instant-message, through the Eurosport site.
This way, NBC marketing gurus will be free to distillate the daily events as they please, starting with the lamest, and moving progressively to the juiciest, like that downhill race, towards the end of the evening when my normal bedtime is well passed. This trick will permit the dying network to shove its stupid commercials from Budweiser to GM and Coke down our throats.
I was talking over the phone today to my good friend Michel Duret, who works in Tunisia, a notorious police-state, where Youtube is filtered, but had just seen Didier Défago (that's right, the other “Didier”) win the event live, without censure and all that advertising BS. I bet I could have seen it live too it if I had been spending President's Week in North Korea or even Iran instead of staying home!
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1 comment:
I'm barely watching it, despite my great interest, b/c I can't stand a lot of the b.s.
Also, although I happily cheer for "Team USA" it gets incredibly annoying (to me anyway) how the network pretends almost nothing else matters than "US medals"..... I would like the focus to be on the events and athletes, not on the "national competition" aspects, but I guess the latter is what drives a lot of viewership, maybe?
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