It's all about me

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
The worldwide population of women is holding steady at 51%. Do you seriously think this is something NBC would continue to do without volumes of market research to back it up? Those little vignettes piss off sports fans, but the overall demographic for Olympics coverage doesn't consist of sports fans --- not even a majority. My mother watches the Olympics.

Then why does Lifetime have such shitty ratings?

TM

[greatwhitenorthchick]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
The worldwide population of women is holding steady at 51%.

Don't you mean the US population of women is holding steady at 51%? Leaving aside your insult (which as a woman residing in the US I take great offense to, seriously), who watches NBC outside the US?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Then why does Lifetime have such shitty ratings?

'Cuz women are all watching the Olympics on NBC.

[robustpuppy]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
The worldwide population of women is holding steady at 51%. Do you seriously think this is something NBC would continue to do without volumes of market research to back it up?

Sexist fuck.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
3. Put the fucking Olympics in high def, live, damnit. If I can watch numerous golf events, the Super Bowl and the NBA Finals in high def, you would think they could get this done in the largest sporting event in the world.

Concur. Apparently, there was some sort of problem with how Nielsen was tracking viewers in high-def, such that putting on a high-def feed would poach viewers from the standard def feed being tracked by Nielsen. So they give affiliates the HD feed on an even worse time-delay so their Nielsen numbers don't suffer.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
Don't you mean the US population of women is holding steady at 51%? Leaving aside your insult (which as a woman residing in the US I take great offense to, seriously), who watches NBC outside the US?

You just took dead seriously a post in which I referred to my mother getting stabbed in the back while watching the Olympics. FWIW.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
And when someone from another country does well, stop telling me that they train here, or that they live here or that their coach is from here or was taught by some great former American coach. I don't give a fuck. Neither does anyone else (with half a brain). The woman who is currently kicking everyone's ass in the event will be medaling for Romania, not the US. Stop trying to take credit for it.

The Greek baseball team may merit an exception to your rule.

I assume other countries have coverage that is like ours (meaning, they focus way too much on their own citizens). Are there any major differences in coverage that make it a better experience elsewhere? Anybody?

The coverage on the not-NBC channels (CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and USA) was better, though intermittent. More obscure sports, fewer human interest stories, and more athletes from other countries. I watched some of the boxing coverage (announced by Teddy Atlas, who sounds the way a boxing announcer should) and they seemed to feature bouts with boxers they believed had a chance of going the distance, without regard to what country they were from.

And I think someone's offereing a hi def olympics package. It would piss me off if they made you pay extra for it if you already had hi def.

TM [/QUOTE]

[greatwhitenorthchick]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
You just took dead seriously a post in which I referred to my mother getting stabbed in the back while watching the Olympics. FWIW.

I'm sorry about your mother. FWIW, you didn't answer my question.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
[Long post, so skip if you don't want to read an Olympic-sized rant.]

4. Do NOT mention Mark Spitz until someone is actually holding 4 or 5 gold medals. Fuck Phelps. He won one race out of the three he's been in. But before the first race, you were saying he had a chance to win 8 golds. Kiss my ass. Ridiculous expectations.

TM

I don't know why they even talked about it. He never had a chance. He has never been w/in a second of Thorpe in the 200 Free. Thorpe has swam 8 of the 9 fastest 200 frees ever. And The Flying Dutchman has always been faster than Phelps as well.

The 4x100 team never had a chance either. And I'm not saying this in hindsight. It was obvious based on previous times before this year's race. At most, Phelps could have won 6 gold medals, but even that is/was unlikely.

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
[Long post, so skip if you don't want to read an Olympic-sized rant.]...
(Last night, one of the commentators criticized the Japanese winner for ever-so-slightly, almost using a dolphin kick out of the turn in the breast stroke final. Uh...what? They showed it in slow motion and the guy talking was smoking crack. No dolphin kick. He straight up beat our guy's ass. Shut the fuck up and accept it. In fact, applaud him for being the better man. And stop making excuses for our guy who just lost. Jesus Christ.)
TM

Gt to disagree with you here. He definitely used a dolphin kick, and it definitely mattered - he was behind coming off the wall and was a meter or so ahead when they came up for air the first time - the same margin by which he won.

Be that as it may, I've liked watching the coverage on the other channels. There seems to be less of the crap vignettes, more action.

Bob "Here's another country that's never won a medal" Costas needs a bullet in the head.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
You just took dead seriously a post in which I referred to my mother getting stabbed in the back while watching the Olympics. FWIW.

All these years of lefty cred shot to hell with a single joke. With all this talk of Olympics, how could you not remember Jimmy the Greek? Give your ACLU card and your angry female folk cds to Ty on your way out of the politics board. I'll miss you over there.

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
I don't know why they even talked about it. He never had a chance. He has never been w/in a second of Thorpe in the 200 Free. Thorpe has swam 8 of the 9 fastest 200 frees ever. And The Flying Dutchman has always been faster than Phelps as well.

The 4x100 team never had a chance either. At most, Phelps could have won 6 gold medals, but even that is/was unlikely.

If I may ask a silly question or two, I was wondering why the Australia colors for uniforms are green and yellow (clearly having nothing to do with the color of the flag), and further why announcers might call them the "great green and white" in light of the uniform colors. and yes, I know I should have said colours.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by baltassoc
Gt to disagree with you here. He definitely used a dolphin kick, and it definitely mattered - he was behind coming off the wall and was a meter or so ahead when they came up for air the first time - the same margin by which he won.

Be that as it may, I've liked watching the coverage on the other channels. There seems to be less of the crap vignettes, more action.

Bob "Here's another country that's never won a medal" Costas needs a bullet in the head.

2.

The underwater dolphin kick is the fastest stroke in swimming. Which is why they only allow it during the first 15 meters of the butterfly/freestyle.

Do breaststrokers no longer have to keep some portion of their head above water?

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
2.

The underwater dolphin kick is the fastest stroke in swimming. Which is why they only allow it during the first 15 meters of the butterfly/freestyle.

Do breaststrokers no longer have to keep some portion of their head above water?

Technically, yes, but there was a rule change about 12-14 years ago such that (and I don't remember the exact way it's phrased) water washing over the head is okay. The rule caused a change in technique that has dropped serious time in the breaststroke, especially now that the top competitors have been doing it that way for their entire careers (I used to swim breaststoke and butterfly in competition up until highschool, and then the rule change came in breaststroke and I never adjusted, so I became just a butterflier).

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally posted by notcasesensitive
If I may ask a silly question or two, I was wondering why the Australia colors for uniforms are green and yellow (clearly having nothing to do with the color of the flag), and further why announcers might call them the "great green and white" in light of the uniform colors. and yes, I know I should have said colours.

Three different color combinations were long commonly thought of as Australia's national colors: red, white and blue; blue and gold; and green and gold. Red, white and blue were featured in the first coat of arms of the Commonwealth in 1908 and are the colors of Australia's national flag. Green and gold (center) were commonly accepted as the national colors in sporting events even before Federation. Green and gold (yellow) were proclaimed Australia’s national colors on April 19, 1984.

Link: http://www.geobop.com/symbols/world/australia/