Ian Swenson .com

The Olympics have already begun in Beijing. Much has been said about how wrong it has been for the IOC to award China the Games and what a poor political muck-up the Chinese have created with their grand opportunity.

Many posit that the IOC members personally profited from the decision or were too naïve in believing China would elevate itself above imposing its controversial political practices on others. All or none of that may be true; the fact remains that it is a travesty that will be repeated again when the Games come to Sochi, Russia in 2014 under Putin’s regime.

But I wanted to talk about what is a minor travesty by comparison: NBC’s awful coverage of the Olympics.

According to Wikipedia, NBC has exclusively covered the Olympics for the U.S. since 1988 for the Summer Olympics and since 2002 for each Winter Olympics. So for 20 years now, if you’re an average American Joe or Jill, NBC has been your only reasonable choice for Olympics coverage.

I’ve watched plenty of the Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, and Athens Summer Games on NBC, and only sporadically watched the Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City and Torino. With those six Olympics combined, I’ve easily logged over 40 hours of viewage, perhaps double or triple that number. As the years have gone on, I’ve found myself less and less satisfied with each edition of the Games.

During the Sydney Games, I figured out why that was: NBC.

I was seeing fewer sports, and more “stories.” I can’t count how many times I heard the words “[he/she] overcame adversity to compete in these Olympic Games” in an athlete’s story. NBC was clearly more interested in tugging at our heart strings than showing athletic competition.

The clichés and sob-stories got old, and got old fast. It was neat the first couple times to hear how the favored swimmer used to repo cars until someone gave him his big chance. Or how the gymnast’s mom had to work nights at the steel factory to afford the gym fees. Great. I feel for these people and there are great stories, I’m sure.

The problem is: they don’t all have great stories. Many (most?) of them were born into affluent families that could afford to support their athletic daughters and sons with all the requisite training facilities, coaches, managers, and living expenses. And you know what? Many of those athletes are damn good at what they do and are favored in their respective fields.

NBC then feels the need to construct a story around these athletes that really doesn’t exist. Not only does that get old, it’s transparent what they’re doing and it’s insulting.

NBC excels at creating boring sports programming that not only fails to titillate, it succeeds in angering me.

My other gripe with their programming is that they only show the “big” sports. There are hundreds of competitions going on during the Olympic fortnight, but we only see gymnastics, swimming/diving, basketball, track (but not field), volleyball. We’ll also occasionally see a small smattering of wrestling, soccer, synchronized swimming, and softball when the Americans are fielding contenders or the schedule is otherwise light.

I can’t recall the last time I saw any of the following on NBC: archery, badminton, baseball, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrian sports, fencing, field hockey, handball, judo, rowing, sailing, shooting, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, water polo, and weight lifting.

I don’t know about you, but some of the black-balled sports sound very interesting to me, especially the racket sports. I would love to see the Koreans battle the Chinese in badminton. Awesomeness incarnate!

But no, NBC relegates these to their off-brand cable/satellite stations. They advertise 3600 hours of Olympics coverage, but of course, most of this is on their cable channels like USA, MSNBC, and CNBC (but strangely, not BRAVO). They also fudge their numbers by simulcasting it on HD versions of the above channels and Spanish-language channels.

I hope I’m proven wrong by NBC this year. I hope they listen to vocal yet underheard folks — such as yours truly — who demand more from a monopolistic Olympic provider.

Fortunately, I get the Canadian Broadcasting Channel, and plan to avail myself of their fine Olympic programming options.