Olympic Watching
Olympic fever is here! Although people seem to have the fever in different ways. The Olympics inspire some to get up and do things, and they inspire others to sit on the couch and watch television. Pretty ironic, isn’t it.
And especially this time around, there appear to be two types of Olympic watchers:
- The Spoiler Haters - These are the people who don’t want to know what happened on the Olympics until they watch it on TV, even though the events may have happened at least six hours earlier.
- The Time Difference Haters - These are the ones who are frustrated because NBC acts like you don’t know what is going to happen because they haven’t shown it yet.
As you can see, these two groups are completely opposite. So what is a television network to do?
The way I see it, one of the facts of life in 2012 is that we are now a global society. Even though events may be happening on another continent, we can find out about them almost immediately after they happen, thanks to the Internet. If it is something important or special, such as someone winning a gold medal, the word spreads even faster.
To me, both of those groups above are missing the point. These days, you can’t just stick your head in the sand and pretend like something doesn’t happen until you hear about it. But on the other hand, NBC needs to have something to show at night, because if they were showing it live, they would just be showing empty arenas and venues due to the time difference. But for them to act like no one knows what happened before they show it probably isn’t the best thing, either.
I can tell you how each event will end before I ever watch it on NBC: The person in first place at the end f the event will win a gold medal, the person in second place will get silver, and the person in third place will get bronze.
But seriously, I don’t mind knowing ahead of time who will win if the event has already actually taken place. That doesn’t bother me at all, and it doesn’t keep me from watching. Knowing someone has already won doesn’t necessarily take away the excitement of seeing how they won.
My biggest complaint is that I am only home to watch the Olympics in the evening. And all they seem to show during that time is swimming and gymnastics. And next week, track. Dear NBC, there are many, many more Olympic events that people might be interested to watch, and not just during the day when you are trying to fill time until the primetime viewers get home.
Of course, even knowing who won, and even knowing that they will only show a few events, I still find myself sitting in front of the television each evening, watching the Olympics.
Because at least there is something worth watching on television for a change.
