Believe it or Not, You're Completely Wrong

In a piece entitled "Believe it or not, NBC's Olympic Coverage is Pretty Good," Yahoo! author Chris Chase makes himself into an enemy of hockey fans everywhere. At the same time, he makes himself into that guy that doesn't listen to his friends when they all tell him his girlfriend is a psycho until she tries to stab him in the neck for ordering French dressing rather than Ranch.

Make the jump. Read my rant, then feel free to make fun of me. Enjoy.

Here we go. Link before the jump if you missed it. Here are my select favorites:

The only positive, repeat only, is that the games are being aired at all. The only way they could do a worse job is to not show them at all. But we'll get to that.

So tell me how you make the observation that not airing the events live is equivalent to the Hindenburg going up in flames, and then say that the coverage is pretty good. I don't get it. Not showing the games live is idiotic. Not showing the games live IN THE SAME TIME ZONE THE EVENTS ARE OCCURRING IN is flat out asinine. Showing Rachel Ray and Maury Povich episodes about your baby daddy instead of a world wide gathering of the best athletes in the world that happens every four years proves that the people running NBC are no smarter than the chimpanzee who flings poop at the wall at the local zoo.

How do you compare something to the Hindenburg disaster and then say it is "pretty good?"

Moving on we find out that Mr. Chase's top reasons for his profession of love for NBC are as follows: Al Michaels, Bob Costas, the production and the HD coverage, a handful of the color commentators, and wait for it... the LACK OF HOCKEY.

Let's look at these one at a time.

Al Michaels. I agree. Michaels could be announcing a filibuster and I would tune in. But Bob Costas? The guy who screws up the announcing every third word out of his mouth? Nah. Huge failure, Mr. Chase.

The production and HD coverage. HD is not impressive any more, it's expected. This is not 2005. A sporting event being broadcast in HD is not something special. A sporting event being broadcast in standard def is a complete failure. Yes, NBC has covered the bulk of the games in HD, you know, except for hockey, which Mr. Chase does not give a rip about.

The color commentators? Really? That makes up for the lack of live coverage? Dick Button on tape delay makes up for California and the entire pacific time zone needing to watch games they already know the results of?The dulcet tones of Jonny Moseley makes up for Lindsey Vonn winning her first gold medal and everyone around the world knowing it for seven hours before NBC decided the only people in the world who really care were worthy of being shown the event?

Nah. Did you even think this one through? The color commentators? Ouch, man. That's a really, really weak argument.

Now. We get to the coup de grace. Mr. Chase says he believes NBC is doing a good job because they have chosen to do everything possible to irritate the only true loyal TV viewing audience any of these sports have. NBC going to have a lot of Ice Dancing on in June? Is curling going to make the cut at any point other than during the Olympics? NBC doesn't show skiing, snowboarding, biathlon, etc at all except for two weeks every four years.

Let's look at this reasoning.

It's not that you don't like hockey? Yeah. Including the lack of hockey as one of your, and I quote, "favorite reasons" why NBC is doing a pretty good job covering the Olympics just screams love of the game. And prime time coverage? You mean the prime time tape delay replay of the events they should have been showing all day? Yeah, we wouldn't want to miss that.

Most of us do, you [expletive deleted] tool. Thank you very much for patronizing us though. It's not 1988. Good that you noticed that before you made such a big deal about the games being in HD.

Really? Did you research this at all? Could you maybe pull your head from your arse long enough to realize that, except for very rare cases, MSNBC is NOT, repeat NOT, in HD. Same production value? Not even close. The biggest game for the entire live viewing audience and it is sent to the red-headed step child network of the NHL's major TV partner. Yeah. Smart move. As for the same announcers? We covered that already.

They are never "stuck" on a game. They have the ability to do split screens. After all, this isn't 1988, right? Besides relegating a live event to show a tape delayed one, which is ludicrous, if they wanted to show the hockey game and snowboarding at the same time, they could. They could pull the hockey game into one corner and the snowboarding in another, then when the run is over, go back to the game. I would have been OK with that.

Is it better to be "stuck" on ice dancing for 2 1/2 hours?

So why could the coverage on the main channel not have been the live event, ie hockey, and relegate the tape delayed highlight show to MSNBC? After all, we should all have cable if we want to see it that bad, right?

I love it when people make my argument for me. It is indeed a 500-channel age. NBC owns about 75 of them, too. Why could they not show all of the games live? Why can they not find a way to get live coverage to those on the West Coast?

And yes, it does matter, because the channels are not equal, MSNBC is not in as many households as NBC. MSNBC is not in HD in most households that do get it. And turn your question around. As long as NBC is showing Ice Dancing somewhere, does it really matter? What difference does it make if the highlight show is on CNBC while my neighbors who cannot afford the DirecTV package that includes MSNBC have to watch two people in clothes that are too tight spin around in circles? If we wanted that, we'd watch NASCAR.

Mr. Chase, your argument is one of the weakest I have ever had the pleasure of railing against. I thank you for your half-assed attempt at putting a Band-Aid on the debacle that is the Olympic coverage on NBC. Problem is? The weak minded losers you are aiming your argument at don't read Olympic blogs on Yahoo!, they are too busy watching re-runs of sporting events that happened seven hours ago.

You wrote a post trying to convince the people tearing NBC a new one that they are wrong. These are the socially networked, highly educated set, not the lowest common denominator NBC targeted with their coverage. Whoops. I guess that would include you, too. Sorry about that.

-Buddha