# Summer Olympics Schedule



## TivoZorro (Jul 16, 2000)

Does anyone have a schedule made up for the Summer Olympics either in a Word or an Excel Document? I have a PDF Schedule but I don't want to print out 66 pages. Have tried to copy and paste from it but I can't get it to work. Also tried to export it to Word and that doesn't work either.

There are any certain events that I like to watch. Could wait until the TV Guide comes out but wanted to get it done ahead of time.


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## Cereal_Killer (Jan 5, 2007)

TivoZorro said:


> Does anyone have a schedule made up for the Summer Olympics either in a Word or an Excel Document? I have a PDF Schedule but I don't want to print out 66 pages. Have tried to copy and paste from it but I can't get it to work. Also tried to export it to Word and that doesn't work either.There are any certain events that I like to watch. Could wait until the TV Guide comes out but wanted to get it done ahead of time.


You mean like this? excel Olympic Competition_Schedule/by_Session


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## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

Cereal_Killer said:


> You mean like this? excel Olympic Competition_Schedule/by_Session


Interesting, however I assume that most of that isn't very useful for viewers here in the US as NBC will likely show most events in tape delay.


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## Cereal_Killer (Jan 5, 2007)

Yeah, good point. 
I also noticed that football was the first event during the Games and thought wow thats new, and then realized they call soccer "football" everywhere but in the U.S.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

TivoZorro said:


> Does anyone have a schedule made up for the Summer Olympics either in a Word or an Excel Document? I have a PDF Schedule but I don't want to print out 66 pages. Have tried to copy and paste from it but I can't get it to work. Also tried to export it to Word and that doesn't work either.
> 
> There are any certain events that I like to watch. Could wait until the TV Guide comes out but wanted to get it done ahead of time.


Can't you just search the listing online? What're you going to do with the Excel file? I'm curious, not challenging. It might be something I haven't thought of, but would find useful.

What I'd really like to see is some good WishList/SP tips for catching the Olympics beyond the obvious, but that's for another thread,,,


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

I have the Firefox extension PDF Download, which pops up a thing that gives you the choice to download PDFs or look at them online first. The new update has a Web-to-PDF feature in it. IIRC when I read the release notes, it will also go the other way and do PDF -> other formats like Word.

http://www.pdfdownload.org/

Jan


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## TivoZorro (Jul 16, 2000)

Distortedloop said:


> Can't you just search the listing online? What're you going to do with the Excel file? I'm curious, not challenging. It might be something I haven't thought of, but would find useful.
> 
> What I'd really like to see is some good WishList/SP tips for catching the Olympics beyond the obvious, but that's for another thread,,,


I decided that I would handle it this way. Open PDF document (think I got this from the NBC website). Open a blank Word document. Have both windows open at once. Since I can't copy and paste I just pick out what events on I want on which days and type them into the Word document. Up to Day Six now.

Then I thought I would set up a Wishlist where I could go in and look for the Upcoming Episodes and match and record only the ones I have in my document. Therefore, it wouldn't be an Autorecord Wishlist. Not sure exactly how to set it up. Title Wishlist, Keyword Wishlist? What would the title or keyword be? In the next couple of days the Opening Ceremony ought to be in the guide data so I could look at that, but would it be the same title as when they start the regular events?


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## Fl_Gulfer (May 27, 2005)

Since it's 2 weeks away I can only get the first full day here, HDTV
http://www.hdsportsguide.com/14days/


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## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

Here's NBC's proposed schedule, broken down by channel, time, and event:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/2008-07-08-nbc-tv-web-schedule_N.htm

Note that there is no exact time listed for each event - for example, if you want to watch the women's singles badminton final, NBC is airing it on 8/16, but other than "sometime between 10 AM and 6 PM", they don't know when they'll air it. However, some events are listed as airing live. (This will affect other events on the broadcast schedule; a volleyball match can be three quick sets, or five long ones.)

Also, if you are interested in judo, taekwondo, sailing, or men's modern pentathlon, you appear to be out of luck; NBC does not plan on airing those on any broadcast channels, but only on its online site, and who knows (a) how crowded that will be, (b) how long events will be available to watch, and (c) whether or not you need Microsoft Vista.

I am working on a breakdown by sport, which I am thinking about posting to the rec.sport.olympics Usenet group (readable on Google Groups) once it is done.

-- Don


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## Amnesia (Jan 30, 2005)

That Don Guy said:


> other than "sometime between 10 AM and 6 PM", they don't know when they'll air it.


That's a little strong.

A more accurate statement is that they are not saying when they'll air it. I'm sure that they know exactly when they expect *some* things will air, but by making it vague, they encourage people to tune it for the whole block of time.


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## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

That Don Guy said:


> Also, if you are interested in judo, taekwondo, sailing, or men's modern pentathlon, you appear to be out of luck; NBC does not plan on airing those on any broadcast channels, but only on its online site, and who knows (a) how crowded that will be, (b) how long events will be available to watch, and (c) whether or not you need Microsoft Vista.


The answers are:
a) Mostly irrelevant. NBC is using the resources of Microsoft, the same resources used during the Live Earth broadcasts seen by millions worldwide very, very successfully. I'm very confident that there will be few if any capacity issues.
b) I would plan to watch most events in real time, or as close to it as possible. I'm not sure how much "on-demand" presentations NBC is planning to have - I think most of their presentations are live online.
c) No. NBC is using Microsoft Silverlight, which has clients for Mac OS, Windows XP, and Vista.


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## marksman (Mar 4, 2002)

212 hours a day of Olympic Programming is going to be daunting to keep up with.. There is a lot of stuff I want to see, I am just not sure how I am going to figure it out.

I wonder if any of those non-aired shows will show up on On-Demand for the Olympics.


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## TivoZorro (Jul 16, 2000)

But isn't it fun to fast forward through all of the events you don't want to see. Okay, it's a little annoying. But at least you can get eight hours of programming done in maybe half or less actual time depending on what they are airing. And I swear they set it up that way so that you have to record most of the stuff. After all in the days of no VCRs etc people had to set in front of the tvs and wait to see what was going to come on next. Still waiting for the Guide Data to show up to see what kind of Wishlist to set up.


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## TivoZorro (Jul 16, 2000)

Set up a Title Keyword Wishlist using XXIX Summer Olympics. All the episodes are entitled XXIX Summer Olympics. You need to select the iindividual episodes to see which sports are airing. Now I need to finish up my schedule and decide which Tivos get certain recordings.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

TivoZorro said:


> But isn't it fun to fast forward through all of the events you don't want to see. Okay, it's a little annoying. * But at least you can get eight hours of programming done in maybe half or less actual time depending on what they are airing.* And I swear they set it up that way so that you have to record most of the stuff. After all in the days of no VCRs etc people had to set in front of the tvs and wait to see what was going to come on next. Still waiting for the Guide Data to show up to see what kind of Wishlist to set up.


Half? I would bet that in eight hours of programming, there's only 30 minutes or so that's worth watching.


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## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

In your average weekday, you'll have coverage on: (Eastern time)

USA - 2 am - noon
MSNBC - 5 am - 5 pm
CNBC - 4 pm - 7 pm
Oxygen - 6 pm - 8 pm
NBC - 10 am - 1 pm and 8 pm - midnight and 12:35 - 2 am
CNBC - midnight - 4:30 am

Shouldn't be too hard to fill four hours per day, if you have enough Tivos.


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## sieglinde (Aug 11, 2002)

I wish it was a little finer tuned so I could just record what I want to watch instead of four hour blocks of time. USA is getting all the less popular sports such as equestrian and fencing which I am interested in.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

lambertman said:


> In your average weekday, you'll have coverage on: (Eastern time)
> 
> USA - 2 am - noon
> MSNBC - 5 am - 5 pm
> ...


If that was a reply to me, I wasn't saying that it would be hard to find four hours worth watching. I was saying that out of eight hours of programming, there's no way that four hours is worth watching. You'd have to record 12-15 hours in order to find four full watchable hours.

If it wasn't in reply to me, then nevermind.


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> If that was a reply to me, I wasn't saying that it would be hard to find four hours worth watching. I was saying that out of eight hours of programming, there's no way that four hours is worth watching. You'd have to record 12-15 hours in order to find four full watchable hours.
> 
> If it wasn't in reply to me, then nevermind.


i guess it depends on the events you like and if you are willing to watch preliminary and qualifying heats/rounds, or just the FINAL heat/round.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> i guess it depends on the events you like and if you are willing to watch preliminary and qualifying heats/rounds, or just the FINAL heat/round.


Well, that and whether you're willing to watch the mindnumbing human interest stories that take up well over half the time. Add in commercials, recaps, previews of what's coming in the next hour or tomorrow, stories about the location, etc. and you're lucky to average 10 minutes of interesting content per hour.

Now that's not to say that there aren't some hours where there is much more than 10 minutes of good stuff. It just doesn't happen very often.


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## EMoMoney (Oct 30, 2001)

http://www.nbcolympics.com/tv_and_online_listings/index.html
Once they post the schedule this will be nice. It asks you for your zip code then cable/satellite provider.


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

sieglinde said:


> I wish it was a little finer tuned so I could just record what I want to watch instead of four hour blocks of time. USA is getting all the less popular sports such as equestrian and fencing which I am interested in.


I think my ordinary keyword wishlist for 'equestrian' is picking up the Olympics segments which mention equestrian in the description -- try it and see.

Of course you'll also get hit with a ton of Rolex show jumping which is also airing right now ...

Jan


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## sieglinde (Aug 11, 2002)

My equestrian and fencing wishlists are working great. Turns out both events are on USA in the same four hour blocks of time. I will be gone that weekend and my Tivo is fairly full so I will skip this until I get home and can zip through the four hour blocks and watch what I want to.


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## aforkosh (Apr 20, 2003)

My Cycling wishlist picked up the all day NBC broadcast on August 9 for the men's road race. Of course, it got the SD channel rather than the HD channel.


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## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

sieglinde said:


> My equestrian and fencing wishlists are working great. Turns out both events are on USA in the same four hour blocks of time. I will be gone that weekend and my Tivo is fairly full so I will skip this until I get home and can zip through the four hour blocks and watch what I want to.


You might want to look at the Tivo listings again.

I assume you are looking at the USA block for 2-6 AM Eastern for Saturday 8/9 (11 PM on 8/8 Pacific time). Unfortunately, according to the TiVo listings, the 6 AM-noon block which follows it, as well as the noon-2 PM block which follows that, _also_ say that both equestrian and fencing will be on, with "(continued)" at the end of the "episode title".

Hopefully, NBC's website will be a little more specific as to what sports air when (and even that is hard to do in advance if you are including some events "live" - for example, a volleyball game might last an hour, or it might last more than two), but you might want to record all three "shows" just to be sure.

-- Don


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

There are some events next *Wednesday*, before the opening ceremonies???

Also, just like recent Olympics-es, there seem to be some 'repeat' segments, though they're not always full repeats. (The repeat of the opening ceremonies is I think a *longer* timeslot than the original one.. something like 4:23 vs 4 hrs flat.)


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

mattack said:


> There are some events next *Wednesday*, before the opening ceremonies???


I think it's common to have some preliminary matches in various sports to ensure they have enough time to get them all in with proper rest and what not.


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## dmdeane (Apr 17, 2000)

Cereal_Killer said:


> Yeah, good point.
> I also noticed that football was the first event during the Games and thought "wow that's new", and then realized they call soccer "football" everywhere but in the U.S.


Some of us call it football here in the USA too when you folk aren't around to complain. The first American college football matches were essentially soccer matches as the rules then existed. You'll also notice on the Olympic schedule hockey and handball, by which of course they *don't* mean ice hockey or that game where you bounce the little ball off the wall with your hand instead of using a racquet.

"Field" hockey and "team" handball, along with badminton and some other sports, are classic examples of sports that are popular internationally but are either unknown or not taken very seriously in the USA. I'd like to see some actual TV coverage of sports like these instead of endless "human interest" stories that they usually put on the air for American TV during the Olympics.


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## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

That Don Guy said:


> Here's NBC's proposed schedule, broken down by channel, time, and event:
> 
> http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/2008-07-08-nbc-tv-web-schedule_N.htm
> 
> I am working on a breakdown by sport, which I am thinking about posting to the rec.sport.olympics Usenet group (readable on Google Groups) once it is done.


No need - it turns out NBC's schedule already provides a way to view it by sport: at nbcolympics.com, if you go to "TV and Online Listings", then select a sport, the "All Days" box on the left side of the list of days becomes clickable; this will show all planned coverage of that sport, including online coverage (and, unlike the earlier listing, the online coverage is listed by time as well as by day). Once "all days" is selected, you can change sports and the complete coverage for that sport will appear.

The only problem is, they still don't provide times for the events other than which network and program block it is in - and for MSNBC, this means it can air anywhere in a 12-hour block.

-- Don


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## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

dmdeane said:


> =
> "Field" hockey and "team" handball, along with badminton and some other sports, are classic examples of sports that are popular internationally but are either unknown or not taken very seriously in the USA. I'd like to see some actual TV coverage of sports like these instead of endless "human interest" stories that they usually put on the air for American TV during the Olympics.


There's quite a few listings for both sports already showing up.


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## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

mattack said:


> There are some events next *Wednesday*, before the opening ceremonies???


Because of the way the soccer tournament works - the teams are divided into four preliminary groups and each group plays in a different city - it has to start a couple of days early to have enough rest between games and still get the qualifying teams into Beijing for the final rounds. (Also, if Beijing is like the previous hosts, each of the other cities involved will have a miniature version of the opening ceremonies, complete with its own torch.)



dmdeane said:


> "Field" hockey and "team" handball, along with badminton and some other sports, are classic examples of sports that are popular internationally but are either unknown or not taken very seriously in the USA. I'd like to see some actual TV coverage of sports like these instead of endless "human interest" stories that they usually put on the air for American TV during the Olympics.


Well, women's field hockey is taken somewhat seriously in the USA - it's not WNBA-level "seriously", but it's not "only immigrants tend to play it" level (like men's field hockey) either; there's even an NCAA championship for it.

NBC (well, one of its other networks) aired the women's and men's field hockey finals in 2000 (where they used the Australian Olympic network's commentators) and 2004 (and not just five minutes of highlights, either, although they did leave out the first half of the men's final in 2000 because they wanted it to fit into a two-hour slot and the match went into overtime).

However, as far as the main NBC coverage is concerned, they promise the sponsors a certain rating (and if they don't deliver on it, they have to give them huge discounts on commercials during their other popular shows), and apparently they have determined that there are only two ways to do this: (1) by concentrating on events where the USA is likely to win (it's not a coincidence that the one fencing event NBC is planning to air - women's sabre - is the one where Sports Illustrated says USA has the top two competitors), and (2) by trying to keep enough women from changing the channel, and human interest stories appear to be doing just that. (Yes, #2 does sound sexist, but from what I have been able to gather, apaprently it's true.)

-- Don


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

That Don Guy said:


> ... (2) by trying to keep enough women from changing the channel, and human interest stories *appear* to be doing just that. (Yes, #2 does sound sexist, but from what I have been able to gather, apaprently it's true.)


You know, they keep saying that, but who knows how many women viewers they lose because the coverage sucks. If they want more women to watch, they could -- hey, here's a novel idea -- show more women's sports! Have these guys not heard of Title IX, or what?

TV Guide says:


> While the competition will always be center stage, Costas says, "there will be a travelogue aspect to the coverage." Mary Carillo, NBC's late-night host, has been traipsing around China with a camera crew gathering stories. She calls one of her features "stuff on sticks .... They'll put anything on sticks for you -- scorpions, snakes, grasshoppers. I curled up a lot of stuff in my napkin. It wasn't bad food, it's just ... I don't eat duck beaks."


Why do they waste our time with this crap? I can watch Anthony Bourdain's _No Reservations_ on Travel Channel any time I want. And for the people who like weird food stories, there's that other guy on Travel Channel. If I want to watch a travelogue with food, why on earth would I want to do it during the Olympic coverage, and why the bleep should I care about what Mary Carillo thinks?

As a matter of fact, why should I give a bleep about anything Mary Carillo says about anything (except tennis)?

Maybe -- just maybe -- they'd get better results with on-air talent that assumes that people might be tuning in because they are interested, and understands why a viewer might be interested in watching, instead of someone who makes derogatory remarks about other people's sports.

Jan


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

murgatroyd said:


> Maybe -- just maybe -- they'd get better results with on-air talent that assumes that people might be tuning in because they are interested, and understands why a viewer might be interested in watching, instead of someone who makes derogatory remarks about other people's sports.
> 
> Jan


I feel ya, Jan.
I can only assume NBC has focus-grouped this topic to death over the years, and has concluded that your type of viewer is (sadly) in the minority.


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## Ruth (Jul 31, 2001)

What Jan said. 

The Olympics is when I appreciate my TiVo the very most. In my experience there is about 15-20 minutes of actual sports per hour of coverage. Even putting aside all the commercials, all the human interest stuff is total garbage. I honestly don't know how anyone can possibly watch it live.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

dmdeane said:


> I'd like to see some actual TV coverage of sports like these instead of endless "human interest" stories that they usually put on the air for American TV during the Olympics.


Preach on, Brotha!


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## DavidTigerFan (Aug 18, 2001)

My Tivo gave me an option for a "Tivo Guru" I selected a sport and I think it's going to record everything related to that sport. Looks cool.


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## dmdeane (Apr 17, 2000)

lambertman said:


> There's quite a few listings for both sports already showing up.


Yes I've noticed. I'm curious to see if we'll get full coverage of entire matches; I confess I didn't use my TiVo much during the last two Summer Olympics so I may be overreacting based on my memories of my non-TiVo Olympics viewing. I watched the last Winter Olympics (without TiVo as I was on vacation) and it was still heavily "human interest story" and heavily edited, tape delayed coverage of events.


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## dmdeane (Apr 17, 2000)

That Don Guy said:


> Well, women's field hockey is taken somewhat seriously in the USA - it's not WNBA-level "seriously", but it's not "only immigrants tend to play it" level (like men's field hockey) either; there's even an NCAA championship for it.


Actually the fact that it's almost entirely a high school girls and college women's game in the USA goes a long way towards preventing the sport's general acceptance at all by American sports fans (yes there's NCAA women's field hockey but that's a tiny minority sport, relatively speaking, in USA sports as a whole). When I've told American sports fans that field hockey is a very popular men's game in Europe and parts of Asia (India, Pakistan, etc) the usual reaction I get is "do the men play in skirts, too?" 

Just because a sport is played by the NCAA doesn't mean it's well appreciated in the USA. There's some NCAA badminton, for instance, but that doesn't change the fact that most Americans are only familiar with badminton as that odd sport with the shuttlecock that they sometimes play at a summer picnic with bellies full of potato salad (ie, it's a sport that Americans may recognize, but not take very seriously, or understand at a high level, whereas it is a very serious sport elsewhere).


> NBC (well, one of its other networks) aired the women's and men's field hockey finals in 2000 (where they used the Australian Olympic network's commentators) and 2004 (and not just five minutes of highlights, either, although they did leave out the first half of the men's final in 2000 because they wanted it to fit into a two-hour slot and the match went into overtime).


Great, I'm not really keeping track of sports like field hockey so that's interesting. My overwhelmingly negative memory of American Olympic TV coverage comes from Atlanta 1996 when I spent a few frustrating hours waiting for some TV coverage of the USA women's soccer gold medal win and coming up with nothing but a few minutes of highlights (and precious little for the USA men's soccer team, too).


> However, as far as the main NBC coverage is concerned, they promise the sponsors a certain rating (and if they don't deliver on it, they have to give them huge discounts on commercials during their other popular shows), and apparently they have determined that there are only two ways to do this: (1) by concentrating on events where the USA is likely to win (it's not a coincidence that the one fencing event NBC is planning to air - women's sabre - is the one where Sports Illustrated says USA has the top two competitors), and (2) by trying to keep enough women from changing the channel, and human interest stories appear to be doing just that. (Yes, #2 does sound sexist, but from what I have been able to gather, apaprently it's true.)


I wonder if there are any stats for how many (and what kind of) viewers change the channel because of the human interest fluff. At least now they have the multiple TV channels and the internet so that potentially every sport can be seen in full.

I'm mostly interested in the men's and women's soccer, which has excellent TV coverage this time around, due to the fact that the past ten years of American TV coverage of international soccer has shown that there is an American audience for soccer, even if the USA team doesn't win or isn't playing. Soccer is one exception to the "focus on sports where Americans win" rule for American TV coverage; I suspect that some other sports (basketball, boxing, athletics, swimming, etc) also get respectable American viewership even without Americans winning.

As for new stuff to check out I'll definitely be looking for handball, which looks interesting, but I know almost nothing about the sport as I almost never get a chance to watch it; it's listed in the TV guide data but I've no idea if they will show entire matches or just highlights. Youtube handball vid for anyone who is interested since handball is almost entirely unknown in the USA, to give you some idea what I'm talking about:


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## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

dmdeane said:


> Yes I've noticed. I'm curious to see if we'll get full coverage of entire matches; I confess I didn't use my TiVo much during the last two Summer Olympics so I may be overreacting based on my memories of my non-TiVo Olympics viewing. I watched the last Winter Olympics (without TiVo as I was on vacation) and it was still heavily "human interest story" and heavily edited, tape delayed coverage of events.


My first experience watching handball was the late-night coverage of the women's gold-medal match in Athens. I'm intrigued enough to look forward to more.

Bless DVRs, I'm literally recording more than 24 hours of coverage each day. Trying to distill that down to 5 hours of viewing is going to be an Olympian task itself.


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## dmdeane (Apr 17, 2000)

lambertman said:


> My first experience watching handball was the late-night coverage of the women's gold-medal match in Athens. I'm intrigued enough to look forward to more.
> 
> Bless DVRs, I'm literally recording more than 24 hours of coverage each day. Trying to distill that down to 5 hours of viewing is going to be an Olympian task itself.


Possibly the TV networks are learning that American viewers can be a bit more adventurist than they are stereotyped to be, as the mild interest in curling over the past couple of Winter Olympics has shown. Since they now are able to fill up so many more hours of TV time than they could ten years ago they can afford to take a risk on covering the lesser known sports. I'm not sure why I didn't fire up my TiVo during the last Summer Olympics.


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I want to see some table tennis. I know it's really big in the host nation, and I've seen some of those guys play. It's wild crazy action!


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## dmdeane (Apr 17, 2000)

jsmeeker said:


> I want to see some table tennis. I know it's really big in the host nation, and I've seen some of those guys play. It's wild crazy action!


They always show table tennis. Wild stuff. :up:


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## alpacaboy (Oct 29, 2004)

I'm frustrated that while the NBC schedule separates "Men's Volleyball" from "Women's Volleyball," they don't separate "Men's Beach Volleyball" from the _goood_ Beach Volleyball.


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## That Don Guy (Mar 13, 2003)

dmdeane said:


> My overwhelmingly negative memory of American Olympic TV coverage comes from Atlanta 1996 when I spent a few frustrating hours waiting for some TV coverage of the USA women's soccer gold medal win and coming up with nothing but a few minutes of highlights (and precious little for the USA men's soccer team, too).


You mean their "let's take you to the soccer final...(about five minutes of coverage)...GOAL!!!...now let's take you back to the studio" coverage (they did this with both the men's and women's soccer finals)? I was surprised when they butchered the women's final this way, especially as they aired about 30 minutes of the men's final (there was no women's Olympic soccer at the time) in 1992, albeit in one of the late-night slots.

See the end of this post for some real stories from 1996 involving NBC's coverage.

(Spain should try a new strategy: always have His Majesty, King Juan Carlos II present - he was at the 1992 Olympic final and the 2008 European Championship final, and Spain won both times.)

However, nothing beats bad coverage like the 1992 "TripleCast" - having it on PPV was bad enough, but not only did they not include a number of sports (they concentrated on heats of the "semi-popular" sports - for example, preliminary rounds of boxing, and basketball games not involving USA), but when Ahmad Rashad went on The Tonight Show to shill it, Leno made a comment about not wanting to be stuck with "minor" sports for his money.


> I wonder if there are any stats for how many (and what kind of) viewers change the channel because of the human interest fluff. At least now they have the multiple TV channels and the internet so that potentially every sport can be seen in full.


TiVo might - they seem to be able to detect exactly when each box changes a channel.


> I'm mostly interested in the men's and women's soccer, which has excellent TV coverage this time around, due to the fact that the past ten years of American TV coverage of international soccer has shown that there is an American audience for soccer, even if the USA team doesn't win or isn't playing. Soccer is one exception to the "focus on sports where Americans win" rule for American TV coverage; I suspect that some other sports (basketball, boxing, athletics, swimming, etc) also get respectable American viewership even without Americans winning.


Men's basketball does, mainly because other countries also have NBA players.

That reminds me of some things that happened with NBC in 1996:

At the medal ceremonies for men's and women's basketball, each player on each of the three medal teams was introduced. NBC aired all of the introductions for the men, almost certainly because the Lituhanian and Yugoslav teams had some NBA players, but when they aired the women's ceremony, they showed the USA players being introduced, then, "We'll be back for the playing of the National Anthem after these commercials.")
NBC did manage, among its bits and pieces of highlights of canoeing, to air one complete race...which just happened to be the one race USA won. In fact, as far as I know, the only USA gold medalist whose event (and subsequent medal ceremony) was not shown pretty much in its entirety was Kim Rhode - in rifle shooting.
The coverage of the women's gymnastics team round can be summed up as: American - American - American - American - oh look, a Russian gymnast fell; this opens the door for USA - American - American - American - oh look, a Romanian gymnast fell; they're going to have a hard time winning now - American - American - oh look, another Russian gymnast fell - American - Kerri Strug's vault. (They actually aired all 24 of Team USA's routines, and the only time you saw even a glimpse of anybody else was when somebody from one of the two countries also in contention for the gold fell.)
-- Don


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## sieglinde (Aug 11, 2002)

I wish there was some sort of raw footage channel for the Olympics. That is, if I want to see the odd sports or the sports where there are no American competitors or I want to watch an entire Soccer game, I could do so.


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

That Don Guy said:


> However, nothing beats bad coverage like the 1992 "TripleCast" - having it on PPV was bad enough, but not only did they not include a number of sports (they concentrated on heats of the "semi-popular" sports - for example, preliminary rounds of boxing, and basketball games not involving USA), but when Ahmad Rashad went on The Tonight Show to shill it, Leno made a comment about not wanting to be stuck with "minor" sports for his money.


I got my money's worth from the TripleCast. They ran three channels, 12 hours per day, which repeated. I think I recorded one channel in 2 six-hour chunks each day.

I skipped the red channel and thus missed all the boxing and other gunk I didn't want. I got six full hours of the equestrian cross-country with no commercial interruptions. I'd happily pay if I could get the sports I want with no commercial breaks or soppy features about people whose careers I know better than the producers who made the features.

The only snag was that to get the TripleCast, you had to have the PPV box, and Comcast was pushing messages out over the box, so I would come home to diving coverage that had two or three hours with a blinking graphic that said "You have a message". 

Anyhow, when I decided whether to get the Triplecast or not, I counted up the hours of coverage for the sports I wanted, and figured out the cost per hour for the parts I wanted to see. It came out WAY cheaper than movie tickets per hour, so I said, what the heck, and went for it.

Best deal ever.

Jan


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## dmdeane (Apr 17, 2000)

Does anyone know anything about NBC having a special channel set up just for Olympic soccer, and another one just for Olympic basketball? I've heard talk of it on another forum, but I didn't see anything in my recent wishlist searches for Olympic coverage.



> http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2923235
> 
> Check your cable lineups for TV, as NBC is broadcasting something like 50 hours a day of coverage over an ungodly amount of networks. There is something called the Olympic Soccer Channel which will broadcast every game each day (obviously some will be delayed), and it says that you should be able to watch the games online too at nbcolympics.com
> 
> ...





> http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2894622&pagenumber=2
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

The soccer and basketball channels are on Dish, DTV, some Charter systems, and some NE Comcast systems (not mine).


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## JLucPicard (Jul 8, 2004)

murgatroyd said:


> I got my money's worth from the TripleCast. They ran three channels, 12 hours per day, which repeated. I think I recorded one channel in 2 six-hour chunks each day.
> 
> Best deal ever.
> 
> Jan


I took a week of vacation and ordered the TripleCast that year. It was hot as hades that whole week where I lived, but I thought it was great!


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## dmdeane (Apr 17, 2000)

lambertman said:


> The soccer and basketball channels are on Dish, DTV, some Charter systems, and some NE Comcast systems (not mine).


Not mine, either. Blast. 

Edit: I'm on Comcast in North Chelmsford, MA. Reminds me, forgot to update my profile location info.

Another Edit: They did actually add the soccer and basketball channels but they are HD channels which I can't get anyway. Ah well maybe next Olympics.


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## SnakeEyes (Dec 26, 2000)

sieglinde said:


> I wish there was some sort of raw footage channel for the Olympics. That is, if I want to see the odd sports or the sports where there are no American competitors or I want to watch an entire Soccer game, I could do so.


entire soccer games are live. And nbcolympics.com is live streaming events without commentary.


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## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

NBCOlympics.com is outstanding, except there appears to be no way to watch a delayed event without finding out the results.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

Anybody know if Americans will be blocked from watching Olympic video on, say, bbc.co.uk, or cbc.ca?


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## rickertk (Jan 23, 2002)

LoadStar said:


> The answers are:
> c) No. NBC is using Microsoft Silverlight, which has clients for Mac OS, Windows XP, and Vista.


But the OS X client only works on Intel based processers, which means that those of us with G4/G5 Macs are out of luck.

Keith


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## lambertman (Dec 21, 2002)

Marco said:


> Anybody know if Americans will be blocked from watching Olympic video on, say, bbc.co.uk, or cbc.ca?


I guarantee it.


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

If you want soccer, try Telemundo. I'm pretty sure they are showing some of the preliminary matches (including ones that start prior to the opening ceremony).


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## SnakeEyes (Dec 26, 2000)

rickertk said:


> But the OS X client only works on Intel based processers, which means that those of us with G4/G5 Macs are out of luck.
> 
> Keith


Sorry that you use an old and outdated machine.


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## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

SnakeEyes said:


> entire soccer games are live. And nbcolympics.com is live streaming events without commentary.


And it looks like, particularly for events not broadcast over the NBC Universal networks, the feed provided online is from BOB (Beijing Olympic Broadcasting).

As a result, because it's the same feed that broadcasters from around the world use, it's designed to be unbiased - no extreme amounts of coverage of US teams at the expense of everyone else.


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

Partly a smeek, but here are some links:

http://www.nbcolympics.com/resultsandschedules/index.html

Yeah, that's real bright, putting the results and schedules on the same page. 

http://www.nbc.com/Olympics/schedule/index.shtml

http://www.nbcolympics.com/tv_and_online_listings/index.html

Jan


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## murgatroyd (Jan 6, 2002)

From SFGate:

Olympic TV: Coverage won't be so prime in the West



> At the Television Critics Association meeting that my colleague Tim Goodman attended a couple of weeks ago, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics chairman Dick Ebersol was asked about the delays on the West Coast, and explained it like this:
> 
> "We have repeatedly done significant testing or polling, if you want to call it that, on the West Coast," he said. "And ... the vast majority of them, well in excess of 80 percent, want to see the Olympics when they're available to see the Olympics. They don't want to see the key events of the day happening at 4 or 5 o'clock their time. They want to get home and watch them, and that's why there's a delay on the West Coast."
> 
> ...


Jan


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## tlc (May 30, 2002)

dmdeane said:


> Does anyone know anything about NBC having a special channel set up just for Olympic soccer, and another one just for Olympic basketball? I've heard talk of it on another forum, but I didn't see anything in my recent wishlist searches for Olympic coverage.


I don't recall the exact details, but NBC was using these channels to strong arm the cable co's into new contracts at higher prices and carrying all their channels (like ValueVision!). Some cable co's didn't pay and aren't getting these. It was quite a lot of money for 3 weeks of special programming.


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## Distortedloop (Dec 6, 2007)

murgatroyd said:


> From SFGate:
> 
> Olympic TV: Coverage won't be so prime in the West
> 
> Jan


It's the curse of the West Coast. We never get anything live, even stuff that's broadcast from here (like awards shows) get time delayed into prime time occasionally.

I predict that this is probably the last, or maybe second to last, Summer Olympics that will be broadcast this way. Maybe in 4 years, and certainly within 8 years, the TV system won't be anything like we recognize it today. WAAAAY to many offerings for alternative content and delivery methods, and TVs will likely have DVR capability built right into them.

Eventually the Big 4 commercial networks, if they're even around in 8 years, will have to stop catering to Mid-West values and East Coast viewer models, or people will just get their content someplace else.

Look at the Olympics this summer: I can watch them live on the internet, I have TiVo recording on two different tuners almost constantly to catch content on four different networks, and my Mac computer is running Vista in a virtual machine to utilize TVTonic's online feeds of the Olympic highlights for playback on my XBox 360.

With Verizon rolling out fiber to the curb, the cable companies will have to do the same to catch up, or they will lose customers in droves. With fiber to the curb, the bandwidth will allow for HD content from any time zone you want.

Great things coming for Video As We Want It (I should trade mark that).


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