Tag: Winter Olympics

Well the good news about the Canada v. Switzerland game on MSNBC is that it cut Tweety to only half an hour.

The bad news is that I had the misfortune to watch him at all.

Of course if you tune back in at midnight, you’ll get to see that fatuous gasbag for a full hour.

Be still my heart.

No changes in schedule since this afternoon, it’s still pretty much, Men’s Downhill, Pairs Free Skate (Long Program), Snowboard Cross, and Speed Skating (Men’s 500m).

The Snowboard Cross should be much more like NASCAR than this afternoon’s time trials but don’t expect asphalt collapses and flaming chunks of twisted metal (though it is entirely possible someone will slide across the finish line on their roof head).

But it’s really a failure of imagination, pure sports ignorance, and pandering to the “Bubba” audience not to compare it with Moto-Cross which it was modeled after.  It’s a twisty obstacle course with double jumps you have to carry by far enough or FAIL and frankly I saw a lot of people landing short.  The bottom of the turns tend to get rutted too so maybe asphalt failure is not that bad a metaphor (but a major NASCAR FAIL! at Daytona).

4 Boarders to a heat so you get some interaction, but in Moto-Cross they start them 8 or 16 at a time so it’s no worse than that.  In NASCAR you get 32 Cars in 2 Lines wrecking each other 4 or 5 at a clip in the last 2 laps which they have to restart over and over and over and over again until they get a clean White Flag (next to last) lap.

After that it doesn’t matter how many of them wreck eack other, the race is done.  The other 495 miles are just for shits and giggles.

They actually did stick with the (yawn) Cross Country this afternoon which surprised me, especially when it ended early.  Of course they did it out of crass calculation.

NBC Ruins Olympics Men’s Downhill For Millions Of Fans

Henry Blodget, Business Insider

Feb. 15, 2010, 2:17 PM

(A)s usual, NBC wants to maximize its revenue by delaying the event until the most people will watch it: This evening in primetime.  The live finals of the figure-skating pairs competition and other events presumably weren’t enough to ensure the massive audience NBC needs to lose less of its shirt on these Games.

…

Someday, perhaps, the NBC Sports brass will understand that the world has changed in the past 25 years.  Within an hour or two, the name of the winner of the Men’s Downhill will be everywhere–on the radio, on other TV stations, on the Internet, on news sites.  Even people who want to play along with NBC’s self-serving little game will have a hard time avoiding the news.  Thus, for most of them, the most exciting event at the games will be ruined.

h/t TheMomCat

And there’s some skating too.

Tomorrow evening Caribou Barbie will be handling Olympic coverage.  I urge you to make it a fun and exciting experience.

Well, you have to hope this is more exciting than it sounds.

On NBC main they’re covering Men’s Snowboard Cross (think Moto-Cross) and Cross Country (Women’s 10k and Men’s 15k).

The Women’s 10k is supposed to run from 1 to 1:30 pm.  Snowboard Cross preliminary heats, which NBC likens to NASCAR racing (yay, more twisted chunks of flaming metal and holes in the asphalt), from 1:30 to 4 pm.  The Men’s 15k is from 4 to 5 pm.

While they will finally be holding Men’s Downhill this afternoon, the indications are that since it’s a very high profile event they’re going to tape delay it until tonight’s prime time segment.

Of course the schedule also says that they’ll be covering Pairs Free Skate (Long Program), more Snowboard Cross, and Speed Skating (Men’s 500m).

I have no faith at all in the schedule because as it turns out MSNBC did repeat the USA v. China Hockey game last night at 3 am.  Not that you missed much unless you like blowouts.

Starting at 5:30 MSNBC will be hosting Canada v. Switzerland which I expect will be another one.

A much less frenetic day than yesterday when we had America’s Cup and the Daytona 500 in addition to the 2 rounds of Olympics.  I should be able to crank out an Afternoon Edition.

Tomorrow will be less forgiving as I have a training seminar to conduct which will occupy me from about 6 to 10 pm.

We’ll see how it goes.

Who doesn’t like kittens, bunnies, and little baby seals?

Me!

So you already know I don’t much like Figure Skating.  Richard does though and tonight we have one of the two hardest and most technical disciplines- Pairs (the other is Ice Dancing).

The Chinese are the overwhelming favorites, people won’t shut up about them, and of course since it’s Figure Skating the Judging is a joke.  About as credible as a Sunday Morning pundit and just as focused on celebrity and buzz and asskissing sychophancy.

The big difference is at least if they crash and burn Figure Skating Judges have the shame to deduct a tenth or two.

So I think it’s all as real a sport as professional wrestling.

Tonight is the Short Program that at least has the virtue of being short, though I’m certainly not going to guarentee to keep even one eye open after spending 6 and a half hours starting at 4:30 am drumming my fingers watching repeats of the pre-race show waiting for America’s Cup to start (we crushed Alinghi like a bug as I predicted).

Among the other offerings attempting to entertain me (starting at 7 pm on NBC main) are Freestyle Skiing Men’s Mogul, the last run of Men’s Single Luge (flaming twisted metal from the ladies tees), and Speed Skating (Women’s 3000m I think.  Did I mention how useless the website is?).

Those are all on tape delay because they’re actually happening right now (6 pm).

Prison documentaries are far more important than anything happening in Vancouver so MSNBC is not carrying even a repeat of the Finland v. Russia Women’s Hockey that at least CNBC will put aside their paid programming and beat sweetening business biographies grudgingly aside for at 7:30 pm.

At the end of the evening nothing original, only a recap and anthem trivia medal ceremonies which will last but a merciful half hour before all the prancing sequined costumes we’ve seen before starts again.

If they have local news at 11:30 and don’t arbitrarily go off schedule again I’d like to recommend The Venture Brothers.  It’s not the best episode, but they’re all good.

What?  You’re not watching the Daytona 500 on Faux?

What kind of ‘murican are you?  Traitor!

In other news- yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it when I do.  There’s only a 1 hour break from 6 to 7 pm between the Afternoon and Evening shows today and America’s Cup kept me dinking around this morning from 5 am to 10:30 waiting for them to decide not to start.

Assholes.  Don’t they know I need my power nap?

Anyway on NBC main Olympics kicks off today at 1 pm, an hour after the start of the Daytona 500, and I’d have put this up earlier except that like all NASCAR races there will be nothing important happening until the last 5 laps (around 4 or 4:30 pm) except for the wrecks and what kind of sadistic ghoul are you to be watching motor “sports” for the flaming chunks of twisted metal anyway?

It’s kind of the opposite of America’s Cup in that respect.  In the name of “parity” (and close racing to make flaming chunks of twisted metal more likely) they even have built in caution periods to allow the slower cars to catch up.

Pfui.  If I want to watch real racing it’s figure eight School Buses for me (or Trailers which are almost as much fun).

And I suppose I’ll have plenty of time to nap tonight when we’ll be featuring my least favorite sport of all (yes, even less than NASCAR though it’s hard to imagine)- Figure Skating.

I guess us red blooded ‘muricans can amuse ourselves by pointing and hooting at the French judges.

This afternoon we’ll be watching Men’s Downhill (postponed from yesterday when even Robert Redford wouldn’t have raced), more Colbert Nation sponsored Speed Skating (Women’s 3000m), Biathalon (Men’s 10k), the exciting part of Nordic Combined (the Ski Jumping), and 1 more run of Luge.

They’re saving the last run for the evening show to keep us chromosome damaged ‘muricans from tuning out in a NASCAR tailgating induced stupor.  Hopefully there will be plenty of crashes and flaming chunks of twisted metal.

On the aptly named USA Network, Team USA will play their opening game of non-chromosome damaged Hockey against China between 3 and 5:30 pm.  While it’s nice to root for your homies I can’t help but hope it’s a little closer than last night’s 18 – 0 blow out.

Umm… just because I’m totally getting my testosterone induced rage on doesn’t mean everyone else has to shut up.  It’s still ok to talk about politics and stuff.

Maybe you can find a way to hate on the French.

Well, I’m going to start off by bitching about the fact that from 3 to 5:30 am MSNBC is carrying the repeat of Canada v. Slovakia.

You see until then they have to broadcast their oh so important schedule of Prison documentaries.

Hey Zucker!  Who the fuck do you think watches that shit?

Moran.

CNBC will be showing Canada v. Slovakia live starting at 8 pm.  I must say I’m starting to get into the Women’s game.  Fundamentals, who cares that they can’t body check or dunk?

Anyone who thinks its not more dangerous than ski jumping is a fool.

Short Track Speed Skating is a sure thing.  They’re going to try and do Freestyle Skiing and Freestyle Women’s Mogul and I think that’s a big mistake.

If you’ve ever skied moguls in low visibility you know that’s just a recipe for crashes and injuries.  The NBC site (which by the way is as poorly designed and uninformative as it could possibly be) says that they won’t postpone it, they’ll just cancel and let the off camera preliminary results stand.

After are they’re just Women, it’s not like they’re real athletes or anything.

Downhill is postponed due to slush.  As I mentioned earlier that’s how I blew out my first knee.  Soft snow is no good.

Apparently they’re going to fill with Luge from the ladies tees (no offense meant ladies) stealing it from their midnight broadcast.

Goodness knows what they’ll do with the rest of their time.  I predict they run off their inventory of sappy and irrelevant bios and national anthem trivia medal ceremonies.

You know, the reason people don’t watch TV anymore is it’s BORING!

AND THAT BARACK, is why ARod is worth more than Blankfein and Dimon put together.  They’re just arrogant, boring, bloodsucking assholes.

ARod is not boring.

No, Opening Ceremonies don’t count even if they have some ski jumping prelims.

Coverage today starts on NBC at 2 pm and on CNBC at 3.

In the main NBC afternoon block from 2 to 6 pm Shani Davis (who thinks Stephen Colbert is a jerk and Chad Hedrick compete in Speed Skating (men’s 5000m).  Plus, Ski Jumping (K-90 individual) and Biathlon (women’s sprint).

Medals will be awarded in all those sports, but medal ceremonies are just as boring as the Opening and Closing unless you’re playing some kind of national anthem trivia game.

K-90 means they will be using the 90 meter hill.

On CNBC we have Women’s Ice Hockey from 3 to 5:30 pm.  The featured match is between Sweden and Switzerland.

We can also see some of the broad outlines of the main NBC late night coverage emerging.

Each night they’ll have a post-primetime show from midnight to 1 am with original coverage, and then a repeat of their primetime broadcast from 1 am to 4:30 am.

You could be watching Adult Swim and if you’ve already watched the Olympic prime time it will probably be more entertaining.  A never before seen episode of Full Metal Alchemist tonight, followed by a Bleach marathon.  Of course the new episode is up against original Olympic coverage, but it looks like they’ll re-run it at 4 am after FLCL, Cowboy Bebop (never much got into that), and Ghost In the Shell.

I’ll be back with a post outlining tonight’s prime time coverage a little before 8 pm if I can manage it.  Depending on how compelling the Olympic action is Weekend News Digest may have to wait for the 6 – 8 pm break to assemble.  TheMomCat has a This Week in Health and Fitness ready for publication at 4 pm anyway so WND would not go up before 5 pm in any event.

Feel free to talk about what you see and happy blogging.