Summer Olympics

Beware. I have some issues to get off my chest, plus I'm tired and cranky. Apparently I have Olympics Fatigue. This is a real thing. I know it is, because I saw it on television. But I already knew it was real because I keep sleeping through my alarm clock.

Why is this an issue? Because NBC has chosen to show us only swimming or diving Olympic events from London before 9:30pm ET. I don't find it interesting to watch hundreds of people  swim up and down a pool night after night. A couple of nights. Sure. Synchro Diving. Interesting. But every freaking night for two weeks. No. And I'm pretty sure that the most often said phrase during the NBC Olympics broadcast is in fact, "And now back to the Aquatics Center."

I do realize that some people enjoy swimming and diving and for them these are the premier summer sports. Okay. Great. We've now watched so much diving in our house that my youngest daughter has decided she wants to be a Chinese diver when she grows up. "Because they are the best." While she is right about this, the problem here is that this is the only sport she's been able to see because, even by extending her bedtime by an hour, it's the only thing on NBC. But surely the Olympics should be about showcasing every sport in some way, shape or form. This year we haven't seen as many of the biographic pieces that usually go along with Olympics coverage. Or maybe that information is being covered on the NBC cable channels. Along with all the other coverage I want to watch.

I'm more than a bit irked about NBC's decision to put women's soccer on their cable channel. I did get to see two matches. One, I actually watched on TV while we were on vacation at a house that had cable. The other match I watched using the NBCExtra app on my iPhone using a temporary guest pass. This was not an ideal way to watch the women's soccer gold medal match. I missed a lot of the match and the screen was very tiny. What ticks me off is that everyone talked about how iconic these matches were and still they were only available to those people who had cable TV. How are American kids supposed to learn about sports and look up to these athletes if they can't even see the game?

And don't get me started on women's gymnastics! I've been up until nearly midnight for how many nights trying to see some of this coverage. My daughters, at just the right age to be impacted by these triumphs, aren't able to stay up late enough to see any of the competition. Why? Because the Olympics are in London and I live in the Eastern Time Zone. It's about advertising. The 'good stuff' has to be shown to the most number of people in the US while they are awake and apparently that happens after 8pm Central.

So, even though we all knew - according to every website in the world because no one chose to use Spoiler Alerts except Brian Williams - who won the gold medals we still had to wait until nearly freaking midnight!! Sure, there's a chance we'd have seen a greater variety of events if we had cable but I'm not sure about that. And I'm really curious about whether Americans are really that interested in swimming and diving or if those of us on in the Eastern Time Zone were taking one for the team because no one else was actually watching.

There you go. I hope you're enjoying the Summer Olympics. I've seen some amazing feats and some wonderful and inspirational moments. I'm guessing there might've been more but unless NBC puts together a clip reel we won't see them. Let's all hope that coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia is better than what we've seen from London.

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