Nagano. Atlanta. Athens. Lillehammer. Seoul.
Quick: What do each of each of these cities have in common? That's right... each one has been responsible for ruining my TV viewing pleasure for weeks at a time. And now get ready to add Turin to the list. Damn Olympics.
Episodes of The Office and other quality NBC programs will soon be replaced with video following a torch around the world. Once that's over we'll be treated to extensive coverage of obscure sports like skeleton. Somehow it doesn't seem like a fair trade-off.
By all accounts, NBC has quite a lineup planned. According to some reports, the network and its various entities will be broadcasting 24.5 hours of Olympic coverage every day. I'm not sure how much of this I can handle. The opening ceremony is still more than two weeks away and I'm already sick of the whole thing. The only saving grace is that it lasts just over two weeks whereas the last summer Olympics dragged on forever. Or maybe it just seemed that way.
This year should prove to be exceptionally annoying for those of us in the Baltimore area. For the second Olympics in a row, we have a local athlete who will be competing. We had swimmer Michael Phelps in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and this time around we have figure skater Kimmie Meissner. The local TV newscasters will be sure to inundate us with detailed, hard-hitting stories featuring Kimmie's favorite breakfast spot and where she buys her jeans.
I still haven't determined whether I like the fact that the summer and winter Olympics are staggered so that we get to go through this interruption every other year. It used to be that a whole year's worth of TV viewing would be ruined by the international gathering. At least it's a bit more spread out this way.
And finally, so I don't come across as a total cynic, the Olympics do give us one thing to look forward to. No, I don't mean the chance to see people who have spent their whole lives training for a world-wide competition. I'm talking about taking bets on how long it will be before Kimmie Meissner is picked up on drunk driving charges.
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6 comments:
and you thought you didn't have anything new to say .......
the winter olympics suck... I do however love the summer ones. I seriously can watch hours of swimming, baseball, soccer and women's gymnastics. The only thing that is even worth watching in the winter is maybe the ice skating.
the winter games are the BEST! i'm looking forward to them. and i never watch NBC, so i can still watch all of the shows i like.
I agree with you. I am not a big fan of the Olympics. And all the stuff I do like to watch (for some reason, speed skating) usually comes on at 3am.
You can always come over to my house and watch the British version of the Office. I have all the seasons and the special.
Do you know how many people secretly watch things like the olympics hoping to see some kind of disasterous injury / mishap? You know, like that ski jumper whose horrible spill was shown while the announcer said "the agony of defeat"? Or how a lot of ice hockey fans want there to be a bloddy fight on the ice that clears the bench. We're just a bunch of sickos, I tell ya.
I hate the Olympics. I just want to watch my regular tv. Thank god the Bachelor and Boston legal, both on abc, will not be interrupted. Although, I wonder if they will be reruns? I'm already sick of seeing Katie Couric in Italy and they haven't even started the Olympic coverage.
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