How to Fix the Olympics

The Olympics used to be a huge event in America, even when the games weren’t actually taking place here.  But there’s a huge difference between the excitement for the Olympics this year and the excitement of four years ago, when the games were in Salt Lake City.  Why is that?  The competition is the same.  The games themselves haven’t changed.  And how many people really made it to Salt Lake to see the games live, anyway?  (I was there, but I didn’t actually see any events.  Those tickets are freaking expensive…especially when you’re in college.)  I think there are a few reasons for the lack of buzz this year for the Olympics.  Interestingly enough, many of them are linked.  So pull up a chair, because I’m about to clue you in.  

Reason 1:  Tape Delay

In a time where we can hop on the Internet anywhere at any time, why wait to find out what happened?  I bring up espn.com multiple times every day, and whether I want to or not, I see the big results of the day as the top story.  Usually I don’t care that much anyway, but if I did, it’d be hard to break the habit of surfing over to that particular website.

Reason 2:  America’s Competitiveness

One problem here is that we don’t know the people we’re rooting for.  We had Bode Miller and Michelle Kwan shoved down our collective throats before the Olympics started, and look how that turned out.  There have been other stories during the games themselves, but does anyone know what they are?  We don’t know what to watch for when we don’t know the athletes ahead of time.  I would have liked to know we had such a good speed skating team beforehand so that I could have watched for them.  I enjoy speed skating when I have someone to root for, but if not, it’s not like there are amazing feats of athleticism going on here.  It’s guys racing.  That kind of event doesn’t lend itself to watching anonymous people like something such as ski jumping, or watching the guys do tricks and whatnot.  That and slalom skiing and the like are things where you want to say, “Ooh, I know so-and-so is competing here…I’ll have to watch for them.”

Reason 3:  Presentation

I’ve got a few gripes here, though I’m not sure how to fix them completely.  I’m a TiVo viewer, and I know that gives me a skewed perspective.  But come with me here, will you?

I never know when anything is on.  It doesn’t matter to me.  As long as I know something is on, I can tell my TiVo to record it for me, regardless of when said recording takes place.  When it comes to the Olympics, however, I need to know when things are on.  I don’t want to sit through figure skating so that I can see hockey or speed skating or what have you.  And have you tried to navigate NBC’s website?  It’s like pulling teeth to find out when any event is actually on TV.  They really need to simplify the way the schedule is presented, so that I can watch what I want to watch.  I know they want people to sit through the things they don’t want to see in order to get more viewers, but when you’re talking about people who are watching for very specific events, it doesn’t help.  I tried to watch the Olympics live once.  It seemed that for every 20 minutes of Bob Costas and commercials, there was about 5 minutes of actual competition.  Now, maybe I’m in the minority here, but when I want to check out the Olympics, I’m doing so to actually watch the events.  I don’t need hours of back-story for every athlete.  If I didn’t know about them before the Olympics started, it’s already too late.  Am I supposed to sit through hours of back-story and history of Torino so that I know what’s going on for the 10 minutes per hour of actual sports?  Doesn’t seem like such a great pay-off to me.  

I don’t think the problem lies within the events themselves.  A lot of it is just the coverage.  If we knew ahead of time about interesting athletes, and if we knew the schedule of how the events are going to be aired, it would really help people see what they want to see, and I think it would help the ratings, which is certainly what NBC is concerned about.