Recent Stories with tag olympics

Among the adjectives The SunBreak commenters have used to assess NBC's 2010 Olympics coverage: "unacceptable," "boring," "pathetic," "incompetent," "horrible," "terrible," "disgraceful,"  and "awful." People are mad that the coverage is tape-delayed. They are mad about the number of commercials. They are mad that the network shows too many U.S. athletes. Or not enough.

KING 5, presumably inundated with complaints, has posted an apology about the tape delay. 90 percent of Seattlepi.com readers call the tape delaying "ridiculous." (And not in the good way the Sasquatch lineup is.)

But--people are watching. In an age where practically all network TV programming is losing ratings, Winter Olympics ratings are up 15 percent over 2006. Those annoying tape delays? They aren't turning off viewers. Four of the five cities where NBC had the highest ratings Saturday night were outside the Eastern time zone. (Seattle ranked fifth, but had the highest share: 40 percent of Seattle TVs that were on Saturday night were tuned to the Olympics--thanks in part to CBC-less competition--even though they were watching something that was at least three hours old.)

The haters, I suspect, are the true Olympic diehards. The people who want to see all the competitors, who want to see everything live, who can't help themselves from checking online to see who's won. These people are ill-served by NBC's coverage. I wish that NBC had at least given such people an option--some sort of pay site or channel--where their need for coverage could be sated....

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I watched an hour of NBC's Vancouver Winter Olympics coverage on KING 5 this afternoon, and I saw about 90 seconds of actual sports action. I'm not exaggerating. I'm actually being generous.

What I did see was amazing. In covering the normal hill ski jumping from Whistler, NBC showed close-ups of every liftoff, then showed a tense and entertaining series of angles as the jumper flew to the bottom of the hill.

After the jump, analyst Jeff Hastings narrated slo-mo closeups of each take-off, providing smart and insightful commentary on each. We got reaction shots of every jumper, as well as of his coach. And, most interesting to me, a close up of the coach who signals the jumper to start--very tense coaches, these, as they are trying to choose the exact time within a seconds-long window when the wind will be the most propitious. See for yourself: Here's their coverage of Swissman (?) Simon Ammann's gold-medal-winning jump.

Great stuff. But there was so little of it. NBC would show two jumps, then pause for a long commercial break. The jumps themselves are about ten seconds long, with surrounding chatter lasting about a minute for each. So for every four minutes of coverage, with only about 20 seconds of action, I'd see three minutes of ads.

The ski jumping lasted about 30 minutes, in which I saw about nine actual jumps. They did show the last four or so without a break, which was nice.

Once Ammann finished off the competition, Al Michaels let us know that speed skating would be next. Awesome! Can't wait! Too bad, because I'd have to.

First, a commercial break. Then we got an update on how luge qualifying was going. Then, another commercial break.

Back: Speed skating time? Nope, a long piece by NBC sports reporter Mary Carillo, who traveled to The Netherlands to give us a sense of the Dutch passion for speed skating. A neat piece, really, and I wouldn't mind it sprinkled into some actual coverage of actual speed skating. Hadn't seen any yet. And it was time for another commercial break.

When the commercials are over, we're at the actual speed skating venue! (Richmond Olympic Oval, about ten miles south of Vancouver proper). Finally! The NBC speed skating announcers give us a little preview of the event, showing the top US contenders and then...we get another commercial break.

By the time they come back from this commercial break, it's been 30 minutes since the ski jumping ended, and I have to be somewhere. No speed skating for me, although I would've loved to see what NBC did with it. (Although, by this time, I already knew who won, NBC delays the coverage three hours and I'd accidentally spotted the winner on ESPN's crawl.)

I love what NBC is doing coverage-wise, and I understand why they have so many ads. Nice production costs money; they probably budgeted out what they were going to spend long before the advertising market went to hell. Plus they paid $2.2 billion to for rights to these and the 2012 Games; and this was back in 2003 when advertisers paid a lot more for network TV ads. So NBC has to run so many ads to make up what they've spent. I get it.

So I'm going to watch NBC's coverage, but I think, for the first time ever when watching live sports on TV, I'm going to make sure I have a book nearby when I do.

Yes, it is disheartening to see your iPhone display this weather forecast for the week. And with the precipitation, comes flood warnings.

"Because of the significant rainfall expected today, flood watches are issued for the Olympic Peninsula and north interior," says Lisa Van Cise of KING 5 First Alert Weather. "The rivers of most concern are the Skokomish and Nooksack.  The Skokomish is expected to reach flood stage late in the day today."

The Green River and Howard Hanson Dam seem to be spared the brunt of this soaking, though there's already seven or eight more feet of water behind the dam than last week. The Green River webcams say so far, so good.

Something to think about with all the rain is, counter-intuitively, cutting down on your water usage. The excess water hitting storm drains tends to overpower our sewage treatment plants. A few hundred thousand shorter showers would really help out.

Meanwhile, meteorologist Cliff Mass is celebrating an unusual occurrence: It was warmer in Seattle over the weekend than in Miami. Florida has pre-frozen citrus and a guppy die-off in the millions. We had highs in the mid-50s. Mass explains why Seattle has avoided the rest of the nation's deep-freeze here. Short answer: Thank Eastern Washington for sponging up any cold that spills over the Rockies, and the Cascades for keeping the freezer door shut.

Photo courtesy of WSDOT

I just read over at the WSDOT blog that the Amtrak Cascades line is getting a makeover, scheduled for March 2010, once the Winter Olympics are done with.

Besides Wi-Fi and an upgraded video system (the existing video set-up has a charming Soviet-era quality)--hold back the tears, business travelers!--there will be an complete renovation of the bistro and lounge cars. Above is the proposed new look for the bistro car, sort of a Jetsons-meets-the-Rialto-concession-stand vibe.

WSDOT invites you to leave comments and suggestions on their post. Apparently they have some sway with Amtrak. I don't know that I'd put the water fountain at what looks like the entrance to the car. Seems like you turn around with your cup and BLAM! the guy in a hurry smacks you on his way past.

Break out the galoshes.

Back on Friday, Cliff Mass was predicting a major pineapple express "event" starting today through Wednesday. His update post yesterday forecasts heavy rains on the southwest side of the Olympic mountain range. Heavy in this case means 2-5 inches on Monday and 10-20 inches on Tuesday. The North Cascades will also likely get flood-producing rain, though it looks like the Green River valley area may duck the brunt of this storm.

In Seattle, we will awake to a suddenly balmy (well, upper 50s) Monday, with the attendant winds produced by major temperature shifts. The National Weather Service has nothing but rain and showers for Seattle today through Saturday. That's a whole week of stomping in puddles!

If you want to stomp in puddles for the civic good, join the city's Adopt-A-Drain program and help keep your street's storm drains clear of leaves and debris.