A Rant About NBC’s Olympic Coverage Because I’m too Distracted to Write About Anything Else

(The following is read to better effect with Chariots of Fire playing in the background.)

I’m so distracted by the Olympics I can’t manage to pound out a post about anything else. So, let’s talk about the 30th Olympiad as Bob Costas likes to smugly call it. I mean who else says that?

NBC’s coverage of the London Olympics is a royal train wreak.

Do we need anymore proof that Old Media is completely ignorant when it comes to New Media? In an age when we’re used to receiving information literally as it happens did they really think we’d all be OK with them tape-delaying Olympic events by hours and hours?

Pssst…Hey, NBC. People have these things called TVs, Smart Phones, Computers and iPads that they can watch live Olympic coverage on. They even have DVRs that can record it. I know! Amazing, right? Also Twitter, Facebook and pretty much the entire internet knows the results of the events before you air them a bajillion hours later. Yeah, so let’s re-think the way you cover The Games in 2016, m’kay?

Just in: NBC gets the contract for the 2013 Superbowl. Will tape-delay until March, and edit out everything except the commercials. 

And what about NBC’s correspondents? Oh, my word. I didn’t think it could get any worse than Matt Lauer feeling like Americans are so stupid he had to interpret every single element of the opening ceremonies for us. At one point Lauer said, “And The Queen is cheering wildly.” Then the camera cut to The Queen looking as solemn and royal as ever. Newsflash Matt, The Queen doesn’t ever cheer wildly for anything. Who’s the dumb one now?

I especially liked it when Lauer informed us that the country of Laos pronounces its name Lao without the S, but everyone else pronounces it Laos with the S. I’m kind of thinking the people who live in the country are the ones who know the correct pronunciation. Am I wrong?

While we’re talking about the Opening Ceremonies, since when do the British get credit for inventing the internet? I thought Al Gore had the corner on that market.

This has to be the most heavily edited Olympics ever. Remember when you actually saw an event in its entirety? Now it’s just the bits and pieces NBC thinks we need to see. They couldn’t even show the Opening ceremony unedited because they felt a tribute to British terror victims wasn’t relevant to Americans. Um, the Olympics are an international event celebrating international goodwill. That makes all of it relevant to all of us.

I thought the British put on a pretty entertaining show, and they knocked it out of Olympic Stadium with Queen Elizabeth and James Bond. I would expect nothing less from the country that brought us Downton Abby and Sherlock.

Back to the correspondents, why is Ryan Seacrest there? He’s neither a journalist nor a sportscaster. That’s some pretty hard-hitting news he reported tonight about which athletes are the most tweeted about. Yeah, no one except Micheal Phelps social media manager cares.

After Phelps and his team won the 4×200 meter freestyle relay, NBC’s correspondent, (I don’t know her name. Who cares?) congratulated the three other swimmers not on their gold medal wins, but on helping Phelps win. Because it’s all about Phelps. The entire 30th Olympiad is all about Phelps. Everything else is irrelevant to us.

Really I think NBC mostly just likes to show video of people crying. Maybe they should rename this The Crying Games. They’re still milking the footage of a rightfully devastated Jordyn Wieber after she lost out on a chance in the all-around. She won a gold medal too, but the apparently the crying film is more compelling.

This morning I saw a three-minute musical montage of weeping athletes and their parents, and then Today showed a five-minute interview of a British Judo Olympian crying after he missed out on gold. British terror victim tribute not relevant. Obscure crying British Judo Olympian relevant.

At least we’ll always have Mr. Bean. Gotta love that droll British humor.