First, let me get this disclaimer out of the way: I love the
Winteer Olympics. And not just the hockey -- but all the sports:
Torvill & Dean, Matti Nykanen, Johan Olov Koss, Alberto
Tomba, Björn Daehlie, Kjetil André Aamodt... all great memories
of competitions in the past 20 years.
And if you are someone like me, who enjoys watching the Super G and
Nordic Combined as much as the pairs skating or moguls, someone who
likes a little Biathlon mixed with their speed skating, then NBC's
"saturation" coverage is tremendous. I'm not going to denigrate
figure skating or debate it as sport -- it deserves to be in the
Olympics as much as anything else. But the coverage it gets has
become so monolithic as compared to the other sports, it can really
blot out the view. But armed with a dish and working DVR (OK, two
working, souped-up DVRs!) one can ignore the unwanted dross and watch
all the competitions -- not just the ones the suits want you to watch.
Of course, there are some problems: very few events are live, you
must stay away from other media if you don't want to know results, some
of the announcer crews are more grating than enlightening (4 people in
the figure skating booth? come on!) and if a foreigner is shown in a
sport where there is quality US participation, you know they either
fell, crashed, or won a medal.
The good news for hockey fans, though, it that NBC's coverage of our
sport has not been besmirched by any of the above insidious
problems. All of the games have been shown live, and the only
coverage bias shown towards coverage of the US team is that their games
are commercial free. As for the announcing crew, well their hard
work, consistent excellence, and enlightened presentation can only be
matched by the curling crew -- and hockey is a much more difficult
sport to cover than curling!
As good a job as the commentators, sideline guys (Pierre McGuire has
improved greatly from his early NHL on NBC mania), and hosts have done,
special kudos must go to Mike Emrick, who has been calling at least one
and many times two games a day throughout the tournament. Let's
hope his care package include some Ricola throat lozenges!
Gilles Moncour
[email protected] 
