I hate you, Comcast Cable

We have Olympics Fever here at Bitchball. After an Opening Ceremony that would cause even a casual Luddite to go running for the hills (seriously, can we talk about the gigantic tablet PC, more or less, that was the floor of that stadium last night? Or the fact that Lisa and I, more than once, sent each other messages over AIM that simply read 'WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOLY GOD THIS IS AMAZING' since, obviously, one does not need punctiation or lower case letters when one is having ones mind blown by a bunch of Communists and trying to avoid thinking about China's shittastic human rights record. Bonus points for not flinging things at the TV every time Bush or, even worse [today] Putin showed up on screen. Who starts a god damn war the day the Olympics start? Who?), the games are in full swing, and I am already fully prepared to choke a bitch.

You see, NBC did the US a favor and created a whole channel dedicated to men's and women's soccer (WHEE), and men's and women's basketball (bleh) because, well, there are a lot of games, and some people (*coughcoughme*) want to see all of them. It's a smart move, and it really frees them up to air some of the events that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. As I am a huge Olympics whore, I wholeheartedly approve of the fact that I actually got to see the women's fencing medal event (WHAT UP, US SWEEP) because NBC could put the US/Japan women's match on the soccer channel.

There's just one problem. Not everyone gets the soccer channel or the basketball channel. In fact, not even all customers of a given cable provider get the channels. I? Do not get these channels, as a subscriber of Comcast of Philadelphia. Comcast of New Jersey? Gets the channels. Comcast of Delaware? Gets them. Comcast Philadelphia, the HOME GODDAMN MARKET of Comcast Cable, site of the massive Comcast Building, CAN'T GET THE GOD DAMN SOCCER CHANNEL?! So...basically, I'm going to get exactly no soccer the entire Games? Great.

Here's the thing: I know I'm going to get to see some games, and I know that I'll get to see all or most of the US men's and women's games. (I have not so much faith in the men's team, but whatever, we'll see.) That's fine. But I want to see more. I want to see the Brazil matches, because I want to see how Ronaldinho's leg holds up. I want to know if the Dutch team is as good as they look on paper. Shit, I want to see how the Ivory Coast holds up in their first Olympic Games. (For men's soccer, anyway.) But no. Because Comcast Philadelphia isn't carrying the channels. Instead, I get Fox Reality Channel airing shit like 'The World's Trashiest Weddings.'

A pox on you, Comcast Philadelphia. Give me my damn soccer. Whatever. I'm going to go watch Michael Phelps beat the shit out of the rest of the world. Homina. (For the record, I'm thirteen years old and swimming delights me solely because the announcers keep talking about the quality of various strokes.)

But hey: the Prem starts in a week. Sing it with me, people: FUCK. CHELSEA.

Take a look at the US Men's Team, would you? They're all about fourteen years old. The Olympics make me feel like a pervy old lady.

NBC already sucks

The day has arrived! It’s officially 8.8.08, which means the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing have started! (Yes, I know soccer technically started earlier this week. Cut me some slack.) In fact, Day 1 is already over…and herein lies the problem.

Instead of broadcasting LIVE from the opening ceremony, NBC showed The Today Show, choosing to “save” the ceremony for primetime. In fact, the cast of Today show spoke about the ceremony as if wouldn't be happening for another 12 hours, despite the dark sky in the background. Because Americans are too stupid to notice that and don’t understand time zones, anyway, right?

Really? NBC couldn’t preempt Today for live Olympic coverage? I mean, it’s once every two years. Or maybe show the ceremony on one of the other (many) NBC channels? CNBC, maybe? OK, the stock market’s open today, so that’s out. What about MSNBC? All that's being shown there is news, anyway. Or USA? Reruns of Monk, for Christ’s sake. Or that weird Universal channel? I didn’t catch what was running this morning (NOT the Olympics), but I’ll bet it was some B-movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

But, fine. NBC wants to keep the ceremony in primetime, attempting to boost ad revenue and gaining a larger audience. I get it (sort of). Personally, I don’t think showing the live ceremony would cut into the primetime audience that much. Lots of people are at work right now and will wait until primetime, anyway. Plus, in the age of DVR, who watches commercials?

Honestly, I didn’t really expect this year to be an exception for NBC. This is typical of American programming, but it still makes me angry. All I can hope is that most of the events are shown live. Given NBC's track record, I know I'm delusional. But at the very least, NBC, tell us the truth about when things are happening in Beijing. Some of us aren’t as dumb as you think.

[This post has been brought to you by my Olympic boyfriend, Andreas Thorkildsen.]