Friday, February 19, 2010

The Winter Olympics: Thirty Years, Zero Progress

Ask Americans of a certain age what their greatest sports memories are and you can be sure that the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" will make top five, minimum. Beating the Soviet Union's hockey team, the best in the world at the time by far, may be the most shocking upset in our nation's athletic history.

AND THE GAME VERSUS THE RUSSIANS WAS NOT BROADCAST LIVE BY ABC.

Instead, ABC showed the historic event that evening on tape delay so as not to interrupt their affiliates' lucrative soap operas and local news broadcasts.

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Thirty years later NBC is pulling the same crap. Does anyone wonder why the networks are struggling financially? NBC, like the others, plays their customers for fools, hoping enough eyeballs watch the hours old footage in primetime to justify their near billion dollars rights investment.

Ridiculous. The Apartment 404 staff have watched a couple of hours of afternoon coverage, all live. We refuse to be made fools of, or waste time. Lindsey Vonn might be spectacular in every possible way, the snowboarding may be fun, and the hockey is kick butt, but we're not spending the whole night waiting for the good stuff that seems to always come at 10:55pm.

Three decades and zero progress. Apartment 404 has nothing but contempt for NBC's coverage.

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