Not-so-new Olympic sport: Ranting about broadcasting

Watching NBC last night, a few things are now clear:
There were only two events happening in Greece yesterday, girls gymnastics and swimming.

The only people competing were Americans, Australians, and some former gymnastic dynasties. Nobody else matters, and we at NBC are doing you a favor by even trying to pronounce their names correctly.

Why, oh why, do they keep pretending this shit is live? “Here’s what we missed while we were away at the break.” Um, no. Let’s see how this works: NBC films the events. NBC books the commercials. NBC edits the events to fit around the commercials. The events ended hours ago. CNN already told us who won. So, no, “we” didn’t miss anything at the break, if you chose not to show something it was deliberate, not because Whataburger decided to tell us (again) about their BBQ burger. Let’s stop pretending that you don’t add the voice track sometimes after the event has ended, okay?

I call it Girls Gymnastics because as near as I can tell only about two contestants are of legal drinking age. And even they have managed to stunt their growth so chances are they will look like young girls for a long time to come. The happy announcers alternated between saying the 25 year old American (they always mentioned her age) was at the end of her career or that she brought maturity to the team. Ugh.

Speaking of gymnastics (I was), what’s up with them changing the order around to add drama? Now please correct me if I’m off here, but they have a Rotation. That means that the teams march around the gym (it’s so cute, kinda the way they have the kindergartners go from the lunchroom to class in the morning, but I digress) from apparatus A to apparatus B to C and so on. So how come the “big three” of Romania, Russia, and US have a different order on the vault than they do on the balance beam, and then a different order again on the floor exercises? And since when do they do them all consecutively, every other gymnastics finals I’ve watched had stuff going on at the same time (one team is on balance beam while another does the floor exercices, etc.) and in fact in the background you see other teams doing other stuff, but somehow the Big Three are all waiting in line like teenagers at Six Flags to share the same exercise. What’s that about? I think they played with the editing to add a little more drama to what was basically “who didn’t suck more” competition.

Now I watch gymnastics from time to time, not just at the Olympics, since my wife is a gymnastics nut and my kids think it is cool, so that’s why I say it looked really strange to me yesterday. That said, perhaps they changed the rules some this year?

Also, the stands? Half empty. Way empty, if you ask me. That’s kinda sad and a sign that girls gymnastics isn’t quite what it used to be (thinking back over the last several years). No, we aren’t getting a Mary Lou or even a Keri Strug out of this Olympics. Certainly not a Nadia.

Medals! Okay NBC, let’s quit fucking with the video again: the swimmers finished their race. About five minutes later they stood there and got their medals. They were still wet. So why do you say “We’ll be back with the medals ceremony after the gymnastics.” WTF? Americans – we aren’t all that stupid. We KNOW this stuff happened hours before your broadcast, why can’t you just cut out the five minutes and show the guys get their medals? That way the Swimming Fans can go on to sleep or watch HGTV or whatever and it’s over and done.

One last thing. My six year old watched the end of the girls gymnastics with us (why is she crying? well, because she’s trained for fourteen of her seventeen years on this planet and now she’s won a medal). Before I could jump up and turn off the TV (we weren’t going to wait thirty minutes to see them get their medals, they had just finished the competition), on comes a commercial for The Forgotten, an uber-scary psycho thriller with Julianne Moore screaming “where is my son!?” So for the next thirty minutes I had to console my son that her son was fine, if she had one, it was just a movie. Can’t we get a little more family friendly stuff here?

To anyone who wants to remind me that NBC has six channels of programming or whatever – you are correct! Unfortunately, we are old fashioned stupid Americans and our TV does not have a remote. So even if our local market carried Bravo (it doesn’t) or CNBC (not at night), it isn’t that easy to switch over.

What’s worse? Then I had my stupid insomnia again. I fell asleep around three AM. And I blame He Who Must Not Be Named.