As I mentioned earlier, I always find NBC boosterism of team USA obnoxious, and my interest in watching the Olympics (Winter or Summer) is unaffected by how well the Americans are doing. I really have become interested in Biathalon, I literally have seen every event, and find it compelling even without US medalists. I have become a huge fan of the great French Biathalete Martin Fourcade, even though I had never hear of him before.
But my main point is that I think NBC has developed an excellent way to make the Games available to those who are interested. For the Winter Games it is pretty much using one broadcast and 1+ cable channels (NBCSports and some curling and hockey on CNBC), plus every event available pretty easily online (and on Xfinity at least, these can be accessed through my On Demand menu). The Summer Games require I think 5 cable channels (NBCSports, CNBC, USA, MSNBC and maybe USA too?). What I am wondering is, now that the standard has been set, who else could really offer a similar experience? I guess the Disney family could - ABC plus however many ESPN channels there are (it seems like they are capable of putting up extra channels as needed?). I don’t know if the various Fox stations are able to cooperate like this, if so I guess they could put together 4 channels. But what would CBS do? On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 9:22 PM Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 5:11 PM, Chris Neuman <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Despite the fact that the US doesn’t dominate the Winter games quite the >> way they do the summer games, I commented a few days ago to my wife how odd >> it was to not see the US higher up in the medal standings. My theory is >> that it’s a regression to the mean. >> >> I present, without opinion of any kind, a story that appeared in today’s >> Globe and Mail about the US performance in PyeongCheng to date. The author >> links the Elizabeth Swaney debacle and DJT to the American performance and >> crowd presence. >> >> >> https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/sports/olympics/the-americans-and-their-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-games/article38026417/ >> >> (The author is something of a provocateur, a fact you’ll likely pick up >> on in the first para. I still haven’t forgiven him for his hit piece on my >> hometown of Edmonton two years ago, when he was here to cover the Women’s >> World Cup. Such a Toronto-centric A-hole.) >> > > The answer to why American athletes aren't doing well has to be found in > the time before the Olympics, during World Championships and other > international events. Are the Americans dominant there? I don't follow any > of these sports and I will defer to anybody here who does. I thought the > Winter Olympics added snowboarding and other X-Games style events to give > the US more medals and it may be that they have been passed by other > countries. as we don't pay attention to these sports outside the Olympics > we see NBC try to rev up interest in the games by talking about and to > local athletes without giving a sense of if they are objectively expected > to win medals at their sports. With our sense of national entitlement > deflated, US viewers may choose to stop watching as American athletes > continually fall short. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
