NBC, you both suck AND blow. Inexpertly, I might add.

I may get the occasional check from their Bravo arm, but that will not stop me from gleefully masticating upon the palsied, fumbling hand that feeds me. What's causing my ire? The seemingly innocuous act of planning ahead.

The Olympics are coming up. My needs are relatively simple: I want to find out when the women's water polo coverage is on and -- more crucially -- which backwater cable outlet this wonderful sport will be exiled to. So I went to NBCOlympics.com, clicked on the TV coverage, went through the little survey so that I might get listings tailored to my specific cable package, and then ...

Nada. I got a grid filled with blank squares. To find out what's on when, you're supposed to click on the squares, thereby taking you away from the grid and making it more difficult to discern which sports are on simultaneously and thus require finessing the TiVo. And although the pull-down menus let you search by day, or channel, or sport, there is apparently no way to get all the comprehensive listings for a specific sport. Instead, you must search day-by-day to find out when your sport is on. This is inelegant, inefficient, and clearly designed by people who are being compensated per search query tonnage.

If my memory is not failing me at this late and uncaffeinated hour, I believe that NBC is a GE subsidiary. I also believe that NBC may be deliberately obfuscating such basic information as "When in the blue fuck is water polo on?" in the hopes that nutballs like me buy several GE-brand televisions, jack up our corresponding cable packages and descend into a panopticon-like environment of watching TV nonstop until Brenda Villa makes her appearance.

What, me, paranoid? No -- merely infuriated that NBC has managed to screw up the easiest thing on the Internet: a grid schedule.

Comments

[Jenn C.]

You can't tell me you're surprised though - they've been arsing up the Olympics coverage for YEARS, making it abundantly clear that they have no interest in actually broadcasting the Games so much as compelling people to sit through hours of drivel in the hopes of catching 15 minutes of the sport they care about, all in the hopes of hoovering up every possible cent of ad revenue.

[Julie]

Plus, that 15 minutes of the sport you care about will be interrupted three times for schmaltzy profiles of every athlete who ever experienced anything resembling hardship in his or her life--they never just let you sit and watch the game/match/event.

[ambient]

Subject line CRACKED ME UP. Hee hee hee.

[Stephanie]

Further evidence that NBC cares nothing for the viewers? In two words: Al Trautwig.

A quote I pulled from some Tour de France coverage -- "Gone is Al Trautwig, who combined bombast and ignorance in staggering proportions." Such as, perhaps, the time in Feb. 2005 when he commented during the American Cup that Nan Zhang (2004 Olympics all-around bronze medalist for gymnastics) must feel "right at home" in Long Island because "there are a lot of Chinese restaurants around here."

[Shotrock]

I can't complain about NBC's Olympic coverage, because they've almost single-handedly quintupled curling interest in this country, and our club memberships show it. CBS was famous for the Nagano Olympics producer stating at a press conference something like: "I can promise you our coverage will be the most expansive Winter Olympic broadcast ever, but don't worry - we also promise not to include curling, so we don't bore our viewers to death." (Yes, Nagano was 1998. Yes, curlers have LOOOONG memories.)

However, where we got the 411 was through our national site (U.S. Curling Association) who knew ahead of time when and where NBC would run the matches -- mainly because we provide them with the guy in the editing room to tell them how to edit the feed. So, basically what I'm wondering is --Is there some sort of governing body for water polo as well, who would post the TV info on their site?