Olympics Coverage

China vs. Austria in Olympic Beach Volleyball. The Austrian team are sisters. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love the Olympics.  I especially love cheering for the red, white, and blue of the United States.  The thing about the Olympics is that you get to see a lot of sports that you wouldn't otherwise give a hoot about any other time.  It is a good thing it only occurs every four years, because that is about as much gymnastics and track and field than I can handle.  Though I have to confess that I don't think I can ever get enough of women's beach volleyball.

For close to two weeks now, my routine has been to have the Olympics on television as I go through my evening routine.  The only problem with watching the prime time coverage of the Olympics is that everything is on tape delay since the games are in London this year.  In a lot of cases, I have known the results of most of the events before the broadcast began, but I have still enjoyed watching the competition anyway. I think it should become a permanent rule that all future Olympic games should be held in the Western hemisphere so that I can watch the games live in the evenings. After all, this is America dammit!

OK, I am actually kidding about that last couple comments.  This isn't the first time that the Olympics have had a lot of tape delay for the prime time broadcasts here in the states.  The big difference is just how much more we are connected these days.  In the past, it wasn't too difficult to avoid seeing or hearing the results prior to that evenings broadcasts.  Now it is just about impossible.

Early in this year's Olympics, I gave up on trying to be kept in the dark regarding the results.  The culprit ended up being my smartphone.  I have a number of news apps on my phone, along with Twitter and Facebook.  The event was when Ryan Lochte won the gold medal in the Men's 400 meter individual medley and Michael Phelps finished in 4th place.  My phone buzzed and I had a breaking news alert from my USA Today app staring me in the face.  At that point, I just started tweeting every Olympic update that I liked.

Still, I watched the event and enjoyed it.  Same with many of the other events that have taken place during this Olympiad.  In fact, I am watching the Olympics as I am typing this.  Currently, platform diving is taking place, which I actually do not know the results.  And yes, I will definitely be watching the broadcast of the gold medal match of women's beach volleyball between the two US teams of Misty May-Treanor/Kerry Walsh vs Jen Kessy/April Ross even though I know who wins.  Thank goodness the 2016 games will be in Rio de Janeiro in four years.  Maybe there will be some live broadcasts in prime time.

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• NBC spoiled U.S. swimming victory moments before it aired... (stltoday.com)
• Tape delays, Twitter and #NBCfail: Olympic coverage in a media-saturated world (dylanmclemore.com)