Olympics - Easy Choice

The Olympic Games start today. Will I be watching? If you know me, you already know the answer. If not, keep reading.


I live in the Puget Sound region. For years, American Olympic coverage has been downright insulting to our region. It was the Nagano games in 1998 when I became completely fed up. I was watching live coverage of the Olympics on CBC from the very beginning. The first events were skiing, which had to be delayed due to the weather. Shortly after events started taking place, they had to cut out, I flipped to American coverage. What did I get? A three hour delay of the delay. This was while events were in progress. I stopped watching American coverage as a result.

There were other issues with those games. Among them is the hockey scheduling. We were promised live coverage of the first Olympic hockey with NHL players. We got the same three hour delay even though live coverage would have been more suitable for our market. Basically, a game that would have been played from 10 pm to 1 am our time would be delayed to air from 1 am to 4 am. I was not going to stay up the extra three hours to watch the live coverage when I could finish watching the game before it even started.

Additionally, the network blasted Nagano for the horrible coverage they provided. In my opinion, the Nagano Olympics were the best I have ever seen. It's not Nagano's fault they we provided coverage far inferior to the Canadians' coverage. Thank you Canada for caring more about Americans than the American media.

In 2010, I had a bit of a conundrum. CBC lost the rights to the Olympics. The games also took place in my home region. In fact, some people traveled the world for the games and stayed in our state. I caved. I watched NBC's horrific coverage. At least, I tried to. I ended up watching nothing but hockey and curling (curling was clearly from a Canadian feed) since those were the only two events on cable. NBC did a terrific job of reminding me why I stopped watching American coverage. It didn't help that Apolo Ohno, a Washingtonian, was racing to become the most decorated American winter Olympian. Some of his races were booted out of prime time because they took place in prime time for the West rather than the east. I feel sorry for the world-travelling Olympic fans who had to cope with NBC's inexcusable performance.

Will I watch this year? It doesn't help that I dropped cable. That means CBC is not an option. Because of this, I will say the same thing as I did in 2012 when NBC had exclusive rights in London. There is absolutely no way that I will be watching. Of course, you probably already guessed that. We already know that we are getting recycled coverage that is aimed solely at the east coast. One more thing, NBC has posted promos online telling us that the Opening Ceremonies start at 7:30 pm eastern time. That should translate to 4:30 pm Pacific Time. Some people (those unfamiliar with West Coast coverage) will be tuning in 3 hours early because NBC hasn't made it clear that 7:30 eastern is the equivalent of 7:30 Pacific.