TV viewing requires Olympian quickness
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The Chicago Tribune
Published February 11, 2006
So the Olympics are upon us—the remote-control Olympics, of course.
Saturday starts at 6 a.m. with a hunt for men's biathlon on USA Network. It doesn't start for me at 6 a.m., of course, but I'm guessing that at least one person wearing red, white and blue was searching for the aptly named USA.
Muscle memory should tell me where to find USA, the off-peak home of the PGA Tour and U.S. Open tennis. But it doesn't.
So I flip around and find it on Ch. 242, nestled between networks called TV1 and America's Store.
America's Store? I'm picturing miniature flags, oversized grills and duct tape. And I'm not buying.
By now it's a minute before 1:30 p.m., the U.S. women's hockey team has neutralized Switzerland by a final of 6-0, and announcer Mike Emrick is preparing his viewers for a handoff.
"CNBC will have the game between Canada and Italy coming up," Emrick said.
In other words, find the remote.
So this is how it will be for Olympic diehards who want to watch more than a fraction of the 418 hours of live coverage the NBC family has promised.
It would be nice if NBC, USA, CNBC and MSNBC came in a row, like ESPN, ESPNews, ESPN Classic and ESPN2 do on my DirecTV. But they don't.
Hey, at least CNBC and MSNBC are neighbors ... Nos. 355 and 356 on your channel lineup, and probably not No. 1 in your heart.
Things were simpler Friday night, when the father of the NBC family—you know, NBC—brought us the Opening Ceremony. NBC paid $613 million for the TV rights, and the International Olympic Committee spent a nice chunk of it on a show that featured dancers, musicians and the occasional inline skater with flames shooting from the helmet.
The coolest site: 500 performers choreographed to form an active ski jumper. It looked even better if you used the fast-forward button on your TiVo.
The Parade of Nations followed. Co-host Bob Costas, who had called the duty "tidbit Ping-Pong," came through with his usual array of head-scratchers.
"With five major ski resorts, tiny Andorra has more mechanical lifts per inhabitant than any other country," he reported. "And yet, somehow, no winter medals."
Co-host Brian Williams became stuck with the newsy countries, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iran. Yeah, try to come up with something whimsical on that.
New Zealand brought 18 athletes, including a transplanted Canadian curler named Hans Frauenlob. Costas called him "likely the only citizen of New Zealand with a World Series ring. He was the information technology director for the Toronto Blue Jays in the early '90s. Joe Carter hits a Series-winning home run, and this guy gets the same World Series ring. Go figure."
Wild tale. Now if NBC can only tell us what channel he will be on.
NBC reported that the Opening Ceremony met its projections by attracting 50 million viewers. That was good enough to beat "American Idol" (38.7 million) and the Grammy Awards (44.3) but fell well shy of the Salt Lake City Opening Ceremony's 72 million. Chicago was not among the nation's top 25 metered markets. The top three: Salt Lake City, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Milwaukee. |
