I'm finding it nearly impossible to find an actual tv schedule for the freaking hockey games, and what channels they're on. My cable tells me that a hockey game is on (if you hit info) but it doesn't tell you what team is playing? Why can't they tell you in simple terms, how the eff to watch the effing games??? I want to see Sweden vs. Finland and US vs. Canada, and I guess the women's game too.
"In France, The Hunger Games is called Battle Royale With Cheese."
Yesterday I missed run 3 and 4 of the women's bobsled race because the schedule was wrong from multiple sources, including NBC's official schedule. You'd think if anyone would know the event schedule it would be NBC.
Runs 1 and 2 of the four-man bobsled is suppose to be on Saturday and runs 3 and 4 on Sunday. Considering that the Olympics is running out of days, I'm somewhat confident that the days are correct. What I'm less confident about is the time the event will air on those days.
With regards to hitting the 'Info' button; the description is supplied either directly from your cable company or, your cable company through a partnership with a third party. Regardless, the fault is still with your cable company because that's who you're contracted with. I have DISH, which has a partnership with Tribune. When I was watching a Hockey game the other day I hit the 'Info' button on my remote and the description showed the teams.
I found a large amount of the Olympic coverage by NBC to be woefully inadequate, insulting and otherwise lacking.
The 2012 Olympic coverage was amazing compared to this, and that had so many faults (awful "plausibly live" tape delays, insipid interviews and Olympian spotlights).
Yet, each night in 2012 seemed to cover a lot of different events, and you could easily find other coverage on multiple channels. In 2014, NBC was pretty much the sole network showing any kind of coverage. The NBC Sports Network actually cut away from Olympic programming to air Premiere League Football (among other non-Olympic events). Comcast Sports often would have no Olympic coverage on. CNBC showed a few hours here and there. I don't know if USA showed any this time around.
Their website was awful. I mean downright awful. It was hard to navigate and almost impossible to find streaming events in a timely manner. As a web developer, I was pretty appalled at how it lacked almost any semblance of usability testing - and if it somehow did and it actually passed, who did they get to test the ease of navigating that mess of a site?
A few things I think they could do better:
1) Mix up the commentators (and the hosts). They don't seem to be there because they're particularly insightful, more because they are "institutions." Just because they've been doing this job since the mid-90s (or earlier), doesn't mean they should continue to be there. They all seem to provide the same lame, boring insipid commentary every 2 or 4 years. The worst is that they constantly talk over just about every single second of the event. Watch Golf or Baseball to see how it's done, heck - even Football commentators shut up until there's actual action going on to remark on something.
2) Air more events live (they actually did an okay job with a few events, notably Hockey). And air more events on your cable networks, especially your sport networks. What if ABC/Disney had the Olympics and they decided to air the X-Games or Crossfit programming on ESPN or EPSN 2 instead? If they're willing to spend billions of dollars on a multi-game deal, you'd think they'd be willing to air it on tv.
1) Create a site that matches the functionality of streaming sites like Hulu or Youtube. Different channels for different events. Allow for easily streaming content live, whether it is simulcast or a raw field. If they want to cut away to a sponsored advertisement, do the traditional 30 second ads here and there. Ensure that someone is cutting away at appropriate times (if a live event, they have people who are controlling the cameras anyway so there's really no added cost).
2) Put all the athlete spotlight videos online. *engage* the viewers by encouraging them to go to the website for more information instead of the constant cutaways. I said this exact same thing after the last Olympics. Cut down on the on-air spotlights as much as possible. No other big sporting events do it the way that they're doing it (most are pre-game fluff pieces or interludes during time-outs or the short time between innings/quarters. They literally cut away in the middle of the event and (sometimes) return.
"No, not the mind probe!"