Complaints about NBC coverage
As usual, not everyone is happy with the coverage of the Olympics. This year, there seem to be a few complaints in particular.
1. Not enough live coverage. This is particularly bad if you live on the West Coast, but regardless of where you live, you have to stay on your toes to avoid seeing results before events are televised. When the Olympics are on the other side of globe,this is somewhat understandable, but many Americans were hoping that having the Games close to home would result in more events televised live. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. I understand wanting to save some of the more popular events for primetime, but really I would love to make it to primetime without knowing the results of half of the events.
2. Obnoxious announcers. Whether it’s the Opening Ceremony or Figure Skating, a lot of people are simply annoyed by the type of announcing, as well as the volume of it. Many people would like to simply watch the sporting events. Of course, it’s not realistic to think that there would be NO announcing. And, frankly, I wouldn’t want that. Sometimes I need a little explanation as to what’s going on. However, I don’t need non-stop commentary of any event. And sometimes the announcers truly do sound like they’re just talking to hear themselves talk. And sometimes the content of the commentary adds very little for the viewer. So, more pertinent announcing and less of it would make a lot of people happy.
3. Some of my readers, and some people on various forums, have complained about problems with the audio or video. Complaints range from not being able to hear the announcers over the background crowd noise to pixelation of the video. I haven’t had these problems, and I’ve read that this might be a problem with local cable providers. I also wonder, since this Olympics is the first broadcast entirely in digital, whether the type of cables you have on your television matter. We recently switched our t.v.’s cables to hdmi, and I couldn’t believe the difference it made in the audio. Regardless, it certainly would be annoying to try to watch the Olympics and have to deal with the above technical glitches.
So, overall, I don’t hate this year’s Olympic coverage. However, there’s always room for improvement. And if I lived on the West Coast, I would probably be plenty annoyed, having to watch everything including the Opening Ceremony on tape delay. So, what do you think? Enjoying the coverage, or do you have complaints?
Poor schedule and coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic lead me to believe that the NBC managers and executives were either inept or lack complete situational awareness with regard to popularity of different sports. In particular, on 15 Feb, NBC cuts away live coverage of men snowboard cross to a local program with 45 minutes left to medal race, while the afternoon 5 hours coverage included men and women cross country skiing. I am sure that local programs could have been rescheduled while cross country skiing were running, with periodic highlight and update of results. Snowboard cross is a fast pace and exciting event that attracts more audience as compare to slow and less popular cross country skiing.
I’m SO MAD at NBC’s coverage that I stopped watching the Olympics altogether and I’m going to ask my sat company to remove NBC from my TV. I’ve never seen such a pathetic coverage. I’m not complaining about the adds – I understand they need to male money. I’m complaining about THE POMPOUS, GRANDILOQUENT ASSES hiding the Winter Olympics from the viewers with their stupid docudramas, their inane conversations just to promote themselves and VERY LITTLE ELSE. I’m so furious I could kick that Costas pompous ass and that Carillo thing and the judge will set me free… Hopefully next olympics I’ll be in Germany… I had it with this CRAP.
Not only is the tape delaying of major finals (downhill, snowboard cross) frustrating when the events are right next door, but when they finally do air, it seems to be at random. Snowboard cross quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals were scattered at various points during primetime tonight. I gave up hope around an hour ago of seeing the SBX finals, but got lucky when I just happened to turn my TV on and caught it just now. At this point, I’ve pretty much given up on NBC’s coverage since I can’t even catch events consistently on tape delay.
This is the worst coverage ever! The commentators are awful and say next to nothing, possibly out of ignorance. The tape delays and the interspersing of one sport into another is beyond distracting. Figure skating has a mood and atmosphere that is special and by inserting skiing and boarding, NBC just ruins the spell – time after time.
The closed captions are showing up way after the conversations have terminated so to the deaf they don’t permit us to link the talk with the moves at all.
NBC should have farmed this out to CTV (CanadianTV) which is doing a great job that we in the US are not permitted to see. NBC isn’t spending money on this as we see, so it would have been economical and ironically provided superior coverage of these 2010 Olympics. I do hope that the Olympic committee or whoever selects the broadcaster to cover these events, will take more than money into consideration the next time. Quality broadcasting is needed and after all those Roone Arlidge years on ABC, Americans are not going to put up with this much longer. It’s migraine causing to watch such shabby coverage.
I am speechless regarding the commentators for figure skating. They are beyond rude! Their comments during the skating with their gasps and heavy breathing ruined the viewing experience. Also,what right do they have to announce that the wife in the stands is unemployed and has been let go from two jobs. They devulged too much regarding personal information. When the female comentator said it I lost it. I hope both of them get repremanded for their actions.
This is the olympics, it is a celebration of athletes who excel at their winter sport. Please show us all the sports and all the athletes. I live in the United States but I am not from the United States. Please please please show the athletes from all over the world who are just as incredible and amazing in their chosen activity as athletes from this country and they deserve to be seen. NBC should be utterly ashamed and any sporting United States of America citizen should be angry not to be seeing sport in its entirety.
I wish someone would give your readers a resource to make an impact on NBC and their cutting the west coast out of live events – ESPECIALLY since the games are on the WEST COAST. What an insult to those on the West Coast. Does anyone have any ideas how to get this discontent across? I’d even put up with Costas if it were live, but to hear the results on other channels before I get to see the event means that I’ve just turned off NBC and their commercials lose a huge audience.
I’d start by calling your local affiliate. While they can’t make a decision that changes things at the top, they are the most likely to hear you. It’s also worth contacting NBC. It probably won’t change things for this Olympics, unfortunately, but might impact future Olympic coverage. Here’s NBC’s contact info:
email: nbcolympicsfeedback@nbcuni.com
phone: (212) 664-4444
The coverage for this Olympics is the worst. I gave up on watching the Olympics and I usually really enjoy watching the winter Olympics . Half of the things I wanted to watch are on at really weird hours and the all the freaking commercials. I understand the need for commericals but right in the middle of a down hill race. Give me a break. I just check the Internet to see how the US is doing in the medal count and results. NBC you suck!
Last night I was so angry that by the time I finally got to bed at 1 am I couldn’t sleep. The only event that I really care about in the entire games is pairs figure skating. I’m already pissed that they delay the events (which are happening right here, ON THE COAST THAT I LIVE ON), but then it was midnight by the time they got around to the last four teams. They say that they’re going to show various events “in prime time.” In what way is midnight prime time? So during what I think of as prime time we got to see a couple of American teams with potential but frankly, at this point not that much experience or skill, and had to wait around for the teams with actual medal potential until an hour when normal people are in bed. What’s worse, right as they were poised on the brink of actually showing the last four pairs, they cut to snowboarding. That’s it—I am not watching one more minute of the Olympics coverage. Normally I would watch the men’s and women’s figure skating and ice dance competitions, but I am not going to sit there anymore being yanked around from the Coliseum, to Whistler, to snowboarding, to an effing mini-documentary about polar bears, to maybe one figure skater, and back to Whistler, all interrupted after each competitor with more commercial time than the event itself. Everything is already on delay anyway, why can’t they show one competition from beginning to end and then go to the next one? I am going to boycott any sponsor of this “coverage.”
Waiting for primetime here on the West Coast is sad, but then when the time finally does come for an event like yesterday’s men’s downhill we are presented with 6 runs out of 40 some odd skiers. Where was the excitement of just showing the gold, silver and bronze winners along with one other US skier, the token Canadian skier and Didier Cuche.
It says something about the state of affairs when an American living on the same coast as the 2010 Winter Olympic games has to watch live online streaming Bulgarian TV to enjoy the games! Seriously! I am so glad for Bulgaria and their coverage. They don’t talk a lot. When they do, I don’t understand what they’re saying. But, I get to see every competitor and every event regardless of Nationality and the perceived “popularity” of that event. I was so angry with NBC’s coverage last night, I had nearly given up on enjoying the Olympics at all.
Where did you find Bulgarian coverage? I’m sure there are plenty of people here who would be perfectly happy to have an alternative to NBC coverage.
For those of us on the West Coast, this coverage truly sucks. Having to wait until 9:00 PM PST to see the opening ceremonies was very annoying. We finally gave up, went to bed and watched it Saturday evening on the internet. In addition, there are way too many ads, too many athlete profiles, and too much self promotion by NBC. Like others, I’ve given up. In past years, here in Washington State, we’ve been able to switch our channels to CBC, the local Vancouver, BC affiliate and see live coverage with fewer ads and talk-over. But this year CTV outbid CBC for the coverage, and Comcast does not carry CTV. We’ve given up on NBC.
I wake early in the morning, and need to get to bed at a decent hour. I’ve watched Olympics in the past, and was in bed by 10PM after seeing what I’ve wanted to.
For these games, I’ve gone to bed missing many aspects of the games. I missed the last teams of the pairs skating, and as it is now, it’s almost 11pm and I’ve not seen a single American skater yet for the men’s competition.
So much time wasted on commericals and NBC promoting themselves. Very bad coverage.
I am in agreement this is the worst coverage of the Olympics ever. I am so sick of having Costas listen to himself drone on and on about nothing and would rather see events! I like many events and would like to see more than a snipet of competitors before they cut away to something else.
I am also on the West Coast and used to supplement my viewing with CBUT (Canadian TV for live) but that is not an option and one would think there would be something shown live on the very coast the games are in. I am 3 hoiurs away from the events and if I could afford to go, I would have. I nearly lost it with the pairs figure skating last night. Early on we saw the Americans, which is fine, but had to wait past 11:30 pm, I hear it was midnight for the final four who were in medal contention. I’m not sure because I fell asleep because I have a job I need to go to. What morons at NBC decided that the medal round of a popular event, such as skating that was billed as prime time, would be delayed past midnight? This is insane. Generally, you show the main event around 9pm, with a few teasers and cut aways to other events and then about 10:30 pm the final medalists would have aired. I am thinking we are on about a 4-6 hour delay on the west coast rather than just 3, which could be tolerated. I remember as a kid, coming home to Olympic coverage in the late afternoon early evening and it was great. I remember watching Calgary men’s skating finals in prime time. Honestly, us West Coast folks would prefer a 5 pm start if it was live. NBC should have aired it live and rerun it or show us the late night in prime time and then all would be happy. I realize they are doing so because they have no other programming to offer us, but frankly everyone would be served an happy by live coverage in the US. Complaining to NBC is a good idea, but the mighty dollar speaks louder than words. Don’t buy the products advertised during the commericals and then they might hear.
Thanks for reading my rant. Can hardly wait to see how poorly they cover mens’ and women’s medal rounds in figure skating!! HA
I give up…. 6 whole downhill runs. But, they had time to show me polar Bears? I stay up until midnight to get maybe 1 hour of actual competition. I want to see the competition. I truly have no idea what NBC is thinking. Right now in 45 minutes we have seen 3 skaters (i think) and now we have interviews with Button. At the rate they are showing competitions it would take over 6 months to view the olympics.
I give up.
The downhill is a one-shot deal. No heats, no second runs, no qualifiers,, no combined times,no short programs, etc.. Just one fast, exhilarating run by 20-30 of the best skiers in the world. I may have lost count but NBC’s broadcast showed only 6 skiers- Bodie Miller, 1 Norwegian, 2 Swiss, 1 Canadian, and maybe another American. Shameful.
I give up too. There’s a dog show on that looks pretty good right now. Shoot me.
I agree with all the statements so far…pretty disappointing. Years ago I sort of enjoyed the live coverage at ridiculous hours; now we have dull coverage and pretty ridiculous tape-delayed hours. Can you imagine listening to the World Series on tape delay? The commentator for figure skating enlightens me little, but annoys me much. I’d love an option to listen to the music and silence him. Waited days for the downhill, and get 3 runs at nearly midnight? Days and days of luge and women’s hockey. Is this it? I searched online for a web alternative. Yes, another country’s coverage might be better.
Eddie McGiure (Australian) is one of the biggest f-wits to ever be given a television microphone. His references to Mic Malloy and Tiger Woods in reference to the olympic coverage were so inappropriate.
The man should be banned from TV forever
feel free to disagree … markschroder@hotmail.com.au
Brian Williams did a story on the NBC evening news last night (2/16) about Lysacek. Good on him for being a great skater, but why did Williams inject a huge dose of homophobia into the report? Part of the report stated that ‘in order to defend his manly manlitude from the frilly, lace-bedecked nature of the sport, Lysacek has been careful to cultivate a masculine image….’ [that is a sarcastic paraphrase]. Really? It left me wondering if Williams is a homophobe, or if Lysacek is, or if both of them are. Shame on you, NBC.
The first day of coverage…was awesome. The it went completely downhill. I hate NBC as much as ESPN. Both employee announcers who are full of themselves. If they, and I’ve complained for years, spend the time on showing live broadcast, as they do talking and interviewing and talking, maybe the ratings would be there. I personally don’t care for figure skating, but for those who do, boy are you in good shape, as those who love curling. I like luge, skeleton, bob sled, downhill and my favorite, ski jumping. But we only get to see 4-5 guys in the last round and everything is tape delayed, look, I can “tape delay” at home, but I need live coverage during the daytime so I can record it, no NBC says, avoid your tv, radio and anyother media, all day until 12:35am EST, then will show you 30 minutes of luge/downhill etc, but ALL DAY WE WILL SHOW CURLING, LIVE AS IT UNFOLDS. Well as usual, NBC stands for ‘nothing but crap’. Thanks for ruining another Olympics for the rest of us with lives.
Oh, don’t get me started on the tape delay issue. I had it with stupid NBC! I don’t ever see them trying to tape MLB, NFL or NBA games. I’ve always loved watching the Olympics, but the way NBC doing them is downright criminal!
I understand that you need to go to commercials during your coverage, but this afternoon’s coverage of the quaterfinals of the men’s cross-country spring was ridiculous!! As soon as a race was over, you’d cut away to commercials, but when the commercials were over, the next race would be halfway done, or worse!! I think I only saw one race start to finish. Could we get 2? Please? Pretty please?
Try this for live streaming of almost every event.
http://www.ctvolympics.ca
yeah, it is Canadian coverage but you see basically every event in live time. Why would you go to a Belgian website?
What NBC coverage?
NBC schedule today
10am
CTV: Olympic Daytime Coverage
NBC: The Ellen DeGeneres Show
11am
CTV: Men’sSuperG
NBC: Rachael Ray
12pm
CTV: Men’sSuperG
NBC: Local News/Jeopardy!
1pm
CTV: Ladies 15K Pursuit
NBC: Days of our Lives
2pm
CTV: Olympic Daytime Coverage
NBC: The Dr. Oz Show
The figure skating commentators were a disgrace last night after Plushenko finished his performance. They replayed his jumps in slow motion then began to ridicule him by making chicken clucking noises and three-stooges imitations and laughing. I was really shocked—they’ve been bad enough but they really crossed the line with this sophomoric, disrespectful, and unprofessional behavior. NBC should yank them and make a public apology to all the winter Olympic athletes.
NBC is like the North Korean communist party – ignorant but powerful. This is the worst coverage of any Olympics games I have ever seen.
It’s really sad when a TV network basically has a monopoly of the entire Olympic event, then brags about how many people are watching. Sure 22 million people are watching. That doesn’t mean they are happy. They have gone to great lengths to prevent us from seeing the games the way we want, they spoon feed us the “highlights” they think we want to see.
I think no matter what event you are interested in, NBC’s coverage is a big let-down. I happen to like figure skating, but even that event is chopped up into tiny pieces. Last night I got to see maybe 6 skaters (Americans, Russians, Canadians, maybe 1 other country thrown in for variety). I want to see the whole event. NBC owns like 6 cable channels? There simply is no excuse to not give full coverage on USA, CNBC, MSNBC and Universal. They can have the edited prime-time show on the NBC local networks as they have been doing.
Then everyone is happy, except the people who really don’t want to see olympics anyway. I’m sure those people can live with a 2-week event that only happens once every 2 years.
I am sick to death of watching hockey and curling in the Olympics. Hockey is ok if America is playing, but I really don’t care about the other countries. We have missed all of the skiing, skating, and other sports that America has medaled in because NBC keeps putting curling on the channel. We have Direct TV and they said they have nothing to do with what NBC shows.
I hope they never have the Olympics again it has been the worst coverage ever. ABC did a much better job of coverage.
These guys absolutley stink. In my house we have tried two computers, two operating systems later and we still can’t even view the highlights much less the streaming video of the Olympics. The website demands a download of Microsoft Silverlight which doesn’t work even afteryou have downloaded it.
Way too complicated and then it doesn’t even work.
NBC used to be my favorite channel. They own the Olympics. Fine. But I am in a place this weekend where my only option is online. No cable which I pay usurious sums of money to access NBC during the week. So they make it like a sororiety hazing ritual to get the right video plug in to watch online.
If I could avoid watching them at all that would suit me just fine.
So I went to the NBC website, to contact us and tried to send this message, but the message I got back was “You can’t send this complaint because you haven’t downloaded Microsoft Silverlight successfully to your desktop” which I had done three times.
Honestly, this is insulting to those of us who make up NBC’s ratings.
I will indeed tweet about this . . . we shall see what social media can do in terms of gaining attention.
Your alliance with the Microsoft is a disaster.
Watch for me on Twitter, folks, because this is just pitiful in terms of supporting your end users, and I intend to share it.
I will be really intereesting to see if you respond.
Susan Griffin
Ditto with all the complaints I have read. Has anyone else noticed someone shushing the commentators when the races are starting – and they still don’t shut up. My cat is hiding out because everytime I turn on the Olympics I start yelling at the TV. The last Olympics coverage (summer and winter) was bad enough but this is the worst coverage I have ever seen or could even imagine. The last winter Olympics had complete coverage of curling – who at NBC is obcessed with this? I called my local NBC network and asked for a phone number to call and complain about the coverage – let them have it ! The phone # is 212-664-4444. How do they keep getting the contract for this? I too would like to watch an entire event or at least part of it. They switch around so much that it is hard to figure out what is going on. If they didn’t have all those researchers dragging out all the BS on every participant or so many commentators that will not stop talking maybe they would not have to have so many commercials. I asked NBC if they got paid by the word. The nit picking on the athletes is horrible, every little thing repeated, blown up and circled. I have had enough.
Thank you for only showing the final 30 seconds of the USA Canada hockey game. What a joke. And then gee thanks Al Micheals and Chris Collensworth to talk about it. THANKS
NBC Olympics Sports producers are THE BIGGEST LOOOSERS now!
Not showing the USA/Canada Hockey game ! ??
Wait – NBC sports – aren’t they famous for making bad decisions?
Yes – 1968, lets show Heidi the movie instead of the Raiders/Jets game !
This will rank right up there as one of the huge bungles of sports broadcasting.
Luckily for us none of the NBC clowns were hired to run the US Olympic sports teams !!
(we’d be like 100 medals behind in that case).
NBC = No Brain Corporation.
Ok, so why did they air the Czech/Russian game today and then not even show the USA/Canada game. But then earlier in the day they were showing a professional hockey game. I wasnt really interested in either.
I am tired of staying up late to watch the good stuff when I am in the same time zone as Vancouver. I guess keeping Extra and Access Hollywood in their regular time slots is super important??? I mean, what would I do if I missed the latest Hollywood Gossip for a day much less a week? So lame. No excuse for this
I think I am going to boycott all the sponsors of these Olympics.
Someone please put a cap in papa smurf (aka Bob Costas) I am so tired of Bob Costas self important self absorbed commentary. . By the way I work for a living, I just watched Bob fly in to work, The gay Olympian public service segment, a couple of ski jumpers and a riveting interview with Micheal Phelps, I swear I watched this interview 6 months ago. It is now 8:50 I have seen exactly nothing. NBC you cannot possibly suck anymore ….. But I am sure you will do everything you can exceed my expectations tomorrow. Thank god, only 7 more days until I remove NBC from my channels list.
Hello. I am a devout figure skating fan. The skater’s entire body is not seen throughout the entire scratch spin sometimes. We want to see the skater’s entire body during the entire scratch spin. Towards the end of the scratch spin, NBC is often panning to a close-up shot of the skater, thus, ruining our viewing of the entire scratch spin. The beauty of the scratch spin is to see how long a skater can sustain it (we want to see the whole body during a scratch spin). When NBC pans into half of the skater’s body or part of the skater’s body during a scratch spin, we cannot enjoy the totality of the scratch spin. The scratch spin is one of the most popular and favorite moves that we skating fans love to see, and to not be able to see the entire body of a skater during this move is very, very disappointing. Please show the entire body of a skater when they are doing a scratch spin. Thank you. Devout figure skating fan for more than 40 years. Paul
What deplorable coverage
Where is the curling? We are shown a few tidbits of bobsled racing, etc. etc., along with a couple of dowdy human interest stories, but where’s the coverage of the more interesting sports such as curling?
HA! I have the hockey game between USA and Switzerland preempted by aerial shots of an empty Sea World stadium. Sadly, someone got killed by a killer whale, but they are not providing any news. Apparently, part of an attraction closing is more important than the Olympics. Way to go Orlando! Once again you show us that an attraction is more important than your country.
Curling is on USA or MSNBC or CNBC pretty much all day every day.
Worst West Coast coverage ever
I’ve never had to stay up until midnight or later to see any skating which is being toted as prime time coverage. I’ve missed more of the events I look forward to this Olympics than ever before. All that has consistently be seen in true prime time is endless downhill etc etc etc etc…...
I simply refuse to watch NBC at all. Even WITH their “highlights” and reels and delays many, many events just were not covered-and many of those I would have watched. But that isn’t even possible online unless you are ALSO paying for a permanent cable or sattelite connection-which I won’t do. I don’t watch enough television AT ALL to warrant “subscribing” and won’t pay for something I don’t use.
Now, if NBC had half a brain they could have simply streamed it all live online and said “hey-pay us 50 bucks for the full access” and I would have DONE it. No problem. But in effect NBC is saying “if you want to watch our programming, you must BUY into a sattelite provider or cable service permanently” Funny how this happens as they’re merging with Comcast.
I hope they realize that I for one will simply not watch their programming on TV OR online, will NOT subscribe to comcast (the biggest rip-off artists in the book) and will rely on other outlets for information.
Oh-and I have to compliment Canada. Despite the dearth of video available in the US (unlike the REST of the world) the main Vancouver website has done a fine job with at least providing live coverage of each event as it proceeds-so even if I can’t “watch” I can still follow.
Outrageous that they are going into a full program about the 9-11 attacks during the olympics. It’s one thing to give credit to the Canadians for helping, it’s another to go into a full blown story, especially when we are trying to watch the Olympics. This is just another example of what happens when only one broadcaster gets to cover the events….I did not want to watch a full program showing the 9-11 tragedy today.
Boy, do I miss the Canadian broadcast. I always enjoy actually watching the Olympics on their channel, but we don’t get the one that broadcasts the Games.
NBC has done a terrible job. The events finished so late, midnight, those of us who work miss the most important parts. Get some professional commentators for the figure skating, not people who pick on, or rudely degrade the competitors who are not their particular favorites. I swear the woman commentator for the figure skating needs TRAINING! Just get someone else, with a better voice, intelligence, and something interesting to say! Just because you WERE in the field, doesn’t mean you can speak intelligently about the matter.
Having lived in several different places around the world in my life. I have never find it so hard to watch Olympic games live on TV, especially one happening in the SAME continent! They should not be given the right to broadcast future Olympics!