Overall I am digging the way these Olympics are being presented. Whenever I am tempted to complain about something, I tell myself to STF up, as my younger self remembers having no choice but to watch partial and very incomplete US-centric highlights with Jim McKay’s at times jingoistic commentary.
I’m not sure if it is any more accessible than 2016 or 18, or if I just have gotten more comfortable accessing the options online. I have watched a hell of a lot of Olympics this weekend, and still had time to do my walking with friends and hang with wife and son, because I can watch anything, any time. I love that I can watch on my own schedule, and select what I want to see. What is really working for me this time is integrating what I think of as three levels of access: 1) Streaming events, 2) NBC Cable family event coverage, 3) NBC prime time coverage. For an event like archery, which I am strangely into fir no good reason, I have been able to not miss an arrow by watching online. My son is into the Table Tennis, and can follow matches with nations that don’t make it on TV. But NBC has done a decent job televising events like the cycling road races (though I have some criticisms) and Triathlons, and for the most part I watch team competitions like indoor Volleyball, Softball and Basketball on Cable TV. I had thought I would skip the Primetime show, but it turns out that if I record it, I can use it to keep up on events I barely care about (e.g. swimming, which I am glad to skip all preliminaries, and NBC has nicely arranged to have many of the key medal events held in the morning in Tokyo, which makes the live I. Primetime here. I can fast forward through the events I don’t care about at all (e.g. skateboarding, beach volleyball). I was particularly pleased yesterday with how I was able to structure my Gymnastics. I watched a couple of rotations online that did not include the US team. I was going to watch the rotation with the US team, but did not have time, which of course was fine, since NBC’s Primetime coverage was pretty much just of the US team, and watching that after my deeper dive into the other teams was helpful. I was sorry to miss the poor Netherlands team, which competed along with the Americans, but I think was invisible on NBC, but I did see most of the Russian, Chinese, British and Japanese athletes. Even from a US-centric POV, over focusing on The US team is a counterproductive choice for NBC. While there were a lot of great performances from other countries, seeing a broader range of participants only serves to underline how great the US team is, even on a night when they were not at their best. I really enjoy the more international feel of the internet, non NBC coverage, and it is a great relief from the loud, in your face style if US TV. What are we seeing there, it’s not quite BBC, but seems to be British. Sometimes for my American ears they are a little too reserved, and I found to my surprise that I missed the somewhat obnoxious woman who does the NBC diving commentary, and switched over to her at one point. -- 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]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJucRshXGtJjFZRxx7A0GrTRDDkjq%3D6npG%2BCwuViqQHBA%40mail.gmail.com.
