Olympic Poll #6: Least Favorite Part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics

[ColbertWatcher]

Olympic Poll #6: Least Favorite Part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics

The following are links to my five previous Olympic polls:

Olympic Poll #1: Opening Ceremonies Commercials

Olympic Poll #2: Opening Ceremonies Commentary

Olympic Poll #3: The Ceremony

Olympic Poll #4: Boycott

Olympic Poll #5


What was your least favorite part of the Olympics?

Choice #1: NBC (and GE) kissing Chinese ass

Choice #2: every single NBC commentator in every event I watched sucked so badly that I felt stupider just by watching

Choice #3: the commercials

Choice #4: the insulting post-event "interviews", especially ________ (fill in the blank)

Choice #5: those stupid "Up Close And Personal" mini biographies that were neither "up close" or "personal"

Choice #6: how they ignored athletes who weren't American

Choice #7: the hand-off to London show

Choice #8: I was okay with NBC's coverage

Choice #9: I don't care, I didn't watch any of it

Choice #10: Other (please elaborate in reply)

[question everything]

1. The insulting post-event interview especially when a high hope

crashed, Lolo Jones, and a runner, don't remember her name. Shoving the microphone in their faces: what happened? Following them back stage to show their sorrow.

[ColbertWatcher]

5. I hated watching the Lolo Jones one.

That was one of the tackiest, thoughtless things I've seen on TV.

"So, why do you suck? We all saw it! How come you didn't fulfill our every hope as you ran faster than any of us could ever imagine, but made one tiny mistake in a career of otherwise brilliant athleticism? Huh?"

Of course, it's right up there with the one where the NBC idiot made the gymnast cry.

Suckage at its worst.

[pokerfan]

21. Worst post event interview

Costas with McCutcheon two nights ago. "So how did it feel when you learned that your father-in-law had been fatally stabbed? Was it a big distraction?"

[ColbertWatcher]

22. I'm glad I missed that one. n/t

[Nitrogenica]

2. The Bush interview during prime time...YUCK

[2Design]

9. I turned it off n/t

[ColbertWatcher]

11. I must have shut that crap out of my head. n/t

[silverojo]

15. That's DEFINITELY when the Olympics hit rock bottom

What does that aging drunken frat boy have to do with athletics? The idiot can't even get onto a bike without scraping half his face off! :rofl:

[shanti]

32. yes, that

and anything with the chimp in it sucked. when the interview started, i shut it off immediately.

[ThatsMyBarack]

3. ANYTHING with Bush posing as an Olympic "mascot"!

:puke: X 10!

[On the Road]

4. I Was OK With the Coverage

but they could have spent more time on the nonAmerican athletes.

[silverojo]

14. Why?

It was an American network broadcasting to an American audience. It's natural to expect, say, a British network to focus on British athletes, and so on for every country.

There was plenty of focus on the non-U.S. athletes who were getting a lot of attention, like the Jamaican sprinters (Usain Bolt is incredible beyond belief..."Lightning" is an apt nickname for him!).

IMHO, there was way too much focus on Chinese athletes...all part of Choice #1. Memo to China: It doesn't matter how you try to sugar-coat Beijing...it's still an overpolluted piece of crap city that spews out crappy goods and lead-filled toys, and you had some nerve holding ANY events in Tiananmen Square.

That'd be kind of like the Olympics being in the U.S., with the opening ceremonies or something being held in Guantánamo Bay. You don't have a party where human rights violations occurred, m'kay? :eyes:

Finally, NBC's coverage just sucked overall. The "sportscasters" hardly ever kept up with the action, the cameras were so far away from the team players that you couldn't even keep up, and they were so slow to put scores on the board that you hardly ever knew who the hell had scored. NBC stinks.

On the positive side, the opening ceremonies were wonderful, Michael Phelps was terrific, as were so many other athletes. It's also encouraging that the IOC is looking into the fact that China entered underaged girls into the women's gymnastics competition.

[ColbertWatcher]

17. "a British network to focus on British athletes,"

I'm glad you mentioned that. It seems NBC couldn't get Michael Johnson, a reigning world record holder to talk during the sprinting events; the BBC got him.

You'd think that the "American network broadcasting to an American audience" would remember to get a reigning world record holder (and American) Michael Johnson for their coverage.

BTW, I have heard some of the BBC 's coverage and it seems they were able to be objective.

[RB TexLa]

6. Not broadcasting live

[ColbertWatcher]

8. Oh, that's a good one. Thank you for posting this. n/t

[Aviation Pro]

7. Costas the cheerleader.....

...Hey, Bobblehead, if we had 1.3 billion people, all 'volunteers/slaves,' we could build a steel cage in 30 minutes too.

Second pet peeve that's pissing me off, the Eccchson/Motile commercial featuring a bunch of engineers gushing over the petro-murderers efforts to promote higher mathematics in schools. Hey, engineers and geophysicists, hope you like working for a company that has been instrumental in killing 4000+ of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

[ColbertWatcher]

10. Hmm . . . maybe I should have a poll asking which was the worst commercial ? n/t

[silverojo]

16. As much as I hate the Chinese govt.--

It wasn't just Chinese, and certainly not slave labor, that built the Bird's Nest or the Cube. It was a major international effort to create two environmentally-friendly, "green" buildings. If you can catch reruns of the National Geographic documentaries about these buildings, please do so--it's fascinating stuff.

As for the oil companies...of course they want kids to go into math and science. God forbid they get into the language arts, and enable themselves to become reporters who would expose the oil companies' crimes against the environment....

[ColbertWatcher]

19. Nicely put.

It seems the only use the oil corporations have for the language arts is propaganda.

[begin_within]

12. Dwight Stones and Tim Dagget both gave excellent commentary.

The rest, just so-so. I don't know who did the diving commentary but she seemed to be either 30 seconds ahead or 30 seconds behind the rest of the universe.

[ColbertWatcher]

13. Stones has always been good.

And I have to agree with you about the diving woman.

She sometimes predicted the scores!

[onenote]

18. my least favorite part of the olympics: polls on DU about the olympics

[ColbertWatcher]

23. But, which one was the worst? n/t

[pokerfan]

20. The three hour prime-time "live" west coast delay

[Phredicles]

24. The LA Times spending two weeks fellating Kobe Bryant;

of course, they do this when there are no Olympics, too.:puke:

[ColbertWatcher]

25. I wonder if Kobe gave his agent a $4 miliion dollar ring too? n/t

[EndElectoral]

26. The ignoring of Tibet, and referring to Taiwan as Chinese Taipei

Also bothered by the constant picture of Mao in the background, and the ignoring of Tianenmenen Square.

[ColbertWatcher]

31. NBC put their studio in Tiananmen Square! n/t

[SeattleVet]

27. The fact that I was locked out from viewing most of the events.

Since I don't have cable, I find that NBC's coverage really sucks. There is a dedicated YouTube channel for the Olympics, but I didn't find a reliable proxy that shows that I'm in one of the countries that was allowed to watch those. I understand that the CBC had it's usual excellent coverage, but, once again, the lack of a decent Canadian proxy kept me from being able to see their video streams, since NBC has an 'exclusive' within the US for any moving images.

Even NBC's online feeds required that I upgrade from my perfectly serviceable PowerMac G5 to an Intel-based Mac, an install proprietary Microsoft Silverlight software to be able to get the feed from them.

It's *really* time for an end to these 'exclusive coverage' contracts, especially if the contract holder is not covering the events. Perhaps a better way would be to open it to all, with the high bidders getting a larger share of the 'large audience' events, but make it a requirement to cover ALL the events and let the viewers decide what they want to watch. A world record was set in trap doubles, by an American, but I haven't seen any mention of it on NBC, and I know that they have provided just about zero coverage of any of the shooting sports, or archery, and they only mentioned fencing when the USA women's team did a medal sweep in the saber event. Their coverage of that women's saber sweep consisted mainly of showing the final *single point* that won the medal. What a load of garbage.

[JI7]

28. Bush and not showing more events live

i know there is an issue with the time zones and i have no problem showing taped events during primetime for many viewers. but at other times they should show games live. especially things like the opening ceremony, there was no reason to not show that live.

Bush was also horrible and it makes me so happy he will not be at any future games(at least not as president).

i think they showed enough of non americans also. especially those like usain bolt. all nations put more focus on their own people. but i thought they did ok overall in showing all sides.

i thought the personal biographies were ok this time around. they seemed to overdo it in previous times. but this time seems to be just about right. i do enjoy knowing more about them.

[grasswire]

29. the background noise

Honestly, why do people use bull horns and loud whistles and synchronized yelling to the extent that it's a constant assault on the ears? I just couldn't take the noise. Too distracting.

[NavyDem]

30. Other....

During the Olympic Taekwondo, a Cuban Figher was disqualified for taking too much injury time. He promptly attacked the referee. That type of action really puts a bad face on my favorite olympic sport.

[ColbertWatcher]

33. Morning kick! n/t