You Will Never Not Be Watching The Olympics This Summer
Remember in 2008, when the Summer Olympics in Beijing took over television?
Remember how every time you went to a pizza shoppe or paid a visit to your grandmamma or walked by the giant wall of TV sets in Best Buy used to great comedic effect in so many modern comedy films, there were the Olympics, commanding you to be awed or maybe bored?
Remember how sometimes you would turn on QVC just to experience a few minutes of non-Olympics programming? Just to see if you could still feel?
Remember the curious sense of detachment you experienced when you realized you couldn't?
Well, according to The Hollywood Reporter, things are going to be even worse this year, because NBCUniversal Networks will be broadcasting 5,535 hours (that's five thousand, five hundred thirty-five hours) of Olympic Games programming.
Know how many hours they showed of the Beijing Olympics?
3,600.
Almost 2,000 hours less.
NBC itself will show only 272.5 hours of the Games in all. The remainder will be spread out over the network's other cable and broadcast channels, and will include a lot of daytime coverage.
That means, you turn on Telemundo:
¿Quieres ver las Olimpiadas?
You turn on Bravo:
Oh, hey girl, were you tryin' to watch The Olympics?
You turn on NBC Sports Network:
Haha, no you don't, because no one does, but, anyway, they'll be showing the Olympics too.
Worst of all, while Beijing's 12-hour time difference meant that some of the 2008 Games' biggest events (including Michael Phelps' swimming races) were able to be broadcast live during East Coast primetime, the 5-hour difference between London and New York means that there will be live no primetime events this year.
British people are going to see everything happen five hours before we do and then write about it on Facebook and ruin it for us.
In more exciting Olympics news, Bravo (which will be showing tennis, even though the only person I want to see playing tennis on Bravo is Ms. Jill Zarin) launched the first promo video from its third annual Summer by Bravo campaign Wednesday night.
The Olympics-themed clip is less fun than last year's summer camp adventure (possibly because they've swapped out Britney Spears' I Wanna Go earworm for Madonna's Superstar), but marks the return of that inexplicable tiger next to Patti Stanger, so that's fun.
