I've read that NBC wants to target some certain female demographic, under the presumption that women would rather watch fluff pieces on the athletes' personal lives (and, apparently, heavy amounts of women's gymnastics) over, well, everything else. Uh-huh. That, and recoup the massive bucks they've spent on the rights to this thing by trying (via tape-delayed, heavily-edited coverage) to focus it on (U.S.) primetime as much as possible---they assume (and stated as such) that no one'll watch the Olympics live in the dead of night.

Personally, I'm wondering if, thanks to p2p networks/bit torrents/whatever, there'll be someone in Canada or a U.S. city near the Canadian border (like Minneapolis, Detroit, Buffalo NY, etc.) trying to upload coverage of the games in short time after it airs live on the CBC (and well before NBC even gets around to editing the highlights of it or whatever)...

For me, I hate NBC's coverage (too many ads, the inane announcers talking over *everything*, the stupid political commentary said announcers throw in about other countries, etc.), and not being a fan of rhythmic gymnastics, I hate the "women's-gymanstics, all the time, when we actually *bother* to run any events themselves" even more. And since I don't have cable, hearing the actually interesting events are scattered across multiple cable channels doesn't do me a lick of good...

There is an article on wired.com today about uploading the olympics, and why it probably won't happen - interesting reading anyway. At your request, Carl, I would LOVE to hear more about the pole vaulter who overcame malaria. It sounds FASCINATING. Ned says hi - btw.