More Coverage of the Olympics, PLEASE!
So, it’s the Winter Olympics! Are you excited? I know I am. I’m actually most excited for Curling, Alpine Skiing, and Speed Skating…
Which brings up an interesting concern I’m seeing more and more with the olympics. NBC’s coverage. NBC has mentioned a few times that they’re losing money, and viewers during their coverage of the Vancouver 2010 olympics this year. And I feel like they’re not covering enough of the events. I mean, the Olympics is much larger than the portion they cover during primetime, or in the few other channels that show coverage sporadically. I’m sure there’s plenty of Americans that want to watch events that actually don’t involve a medal-contender US Athlete.
For instance, I was watching curling a little bit this afternoon, with USA playing Germany. USA lost 7-5, and most of the other curling events were done, except for the Canadian team, facing Norway, and the game was tied 6-6 heading into Extra Ends… Close, and had to be exciting to watch… But they didn’t cover it and instead went into 15 minutes of talking and commercials… Time they could’ve spent covering the curling match.
That lack of coverage is what frustrates me. And my friend Jose and I were talking a little last night about what they could do to enhance coverage, and perhaps enhance even their profit…
Why isn’t there an Olympic “Premium” network for times like these? Similar to MLB Extra Innings, or the NFL Network. I would love to see something like 5 channels playing 24/7 coverage of the Olympics when they happen. That would be incredible. Even have an online version so you can login with your same account to watch it online if you’re not near a computer.
That’d be just plain perfect. Do it just like MLB.TV currently has… pay a certain fee for the “Season” (in this case, the 2-3 weeks of Olympics every 2 years), and you’d get access to 24/7 coverage. That shouldn’t be hard to maintain at all, no? Please, correct me if I’m wrong.
This way, you can cover CERTAIN events that you know that your mainstream viewers would like to watch (like USA vs Canada hockey, and Figure Skating), but any of the olympic fans that want more than that, can pay for it. It’s a small fee (I don’t know, 40-50 bucks?)
Hell, personally, I wouldn’t even care if there were announcers or not. Atleast show me the game statistics on the screen. But that’s a personal preference that I’m sure not many others would stand by. I just suggest the lack of announcers as an attempt to cut down on production costs.
Is this too far fetched of an idea? Would you be willing to pay for “premium” access to the Olympics?
Premium Coverage counts as this:
- 24/7 Channels (I’m thinking atleast 3 of them would be required)
- Access to ALL events online (so if the event/match you want to watch doesn’t fit into one of the channel slots, you can still watch it online)
Again, I think this is completely reasonable and far from unachievable.
And there is another plus to this whole thing: Your current audience. The one that doesn’t care about the olympics and is disappointed that their “regularly scheduled programming” disappeared for the next 2 weeks? They don’t need to worry about that ANYWHERE near as much as they do now, as NBC would be taking over their main networks for coverage of the Olympics far less.
Is there any restrictions that the IOC place on this kind of solution? The only thing that I could think of as to why NBC hasn’t done this yet is if perhaps they’ve been told the olympics must be free to everyone, in the spirit of the Olympic games being for everyone.
What do you think? What do you KNOW that I don’t and that I need to learn? Give me some comments!
Home Security Systems
So there’s been a recent break in in my neighborhood, and one neighbor has installed a new security system, and another decided to put her sign out for her Broadview Security that she’s had for a while.
And it brings something up that I’ve seen all the time, why can’t I just purchase the sign?
Honestly, why do we even put the sign out? Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of spending 100+ bucks installing a security system and paying 15+ bucks a month for monitoring services if the criminal will simply look at the sign and go “hmm… well, not worth breaking into that house if the alarm goes off!”
Sure, there’s a chance that the robber will continue with the break in anyways, and if you don’t have an alarm, well… shit. But if you do, it only reinforces the fact that this criminal is an idiot, and he’ll be rushing out before he has a chance to steal much.
Of course, I’m realizing that if the signs were open for purchasing anywhere, then people would realize immediately that they can’t trust the signs, and break ins would actually increase for those places that have a sign in front of the house.
I’m sure a lot of people would rather just purchase the sign than spend a lot of money on the actual system.
I know I would.
hmm.
iPhone Battery “Meter”
So, I was using my iPhone on wednesday, bright and early. I had it charging all night and then I unplugged it around 7 in the morning to get started on my day.
Full Battery.
I spend the entire day playing around with it, online, playing Boom, checking out the latest tweets on Tweetie 2… you know, my usual day on the iPhone.
Next thing you know, it’s 10:30 at night, and I’m looking at my phone… Still full battery. How is this possible?
I ended up rebooting, obviously under the assumption that the battery life shown on the phone MUST be wrong, and then when I started it back up, unsurprisingly enough it wouldn’t even LOAD unless I plugged it into the wall.
This got me wondering on a bit. Given that the battery was completely dead to the point that I can’t boot it up (and honestly, I’m surprised the phone didn’t die on me earlier in the day, like around 3-4 pm), I wondered if I hadn’t rebooted, how long the phone would’ve lasted until it shut down.
The way it was acting, however, I came to the absurd conclusion that the phone never would’ve shut off. But of course the battery would die eventually.
I guess I’m still just surprised that the phone lasted as long as it did.
Tiger Woods
So… Apparently the news still considers the things that Tiger Woods has done to be so vital to the public that he remains on the front page…
Wait, what was that? He only did one thing? Oh, cheat on his wife? That’s it? WTF.
Holy Hell, people, seriously. That’s all he did… Cheated on his wife. I’m far from condoning his actions… I absolutely despise cheating and do not stand for it at all, and will never do so myself.
But come on… Why do we hold celebrities and athletes to such high level… Hell, a level HIGHER than we hold ourselves?? So many in society cheat on their “loved” ones all the time, but you don’t see them having to leave their jobs over it, or losing their sources of income.
Hell, Gillette is now LIMITING TIGER WOODS’S ROLE IN ITS MARKETING over this!
I was reading, or listening to something (I think it was the Colbert Report) early last week, and he was mentioning how why did we expect Tiger to be part of a “perfect family?” All along, Nike and Gillette always portrayed him as a “man’s man”… Hell, Buick’s commercials never show him in a car with his family… He’s ALWAYS BY HIMSELF.
It’s really absurd how far the media, and the public, have taken his infidelity.
Honestly, stop this pathetic obsession of celebrities and athletes, and focus on your own lives, and making them as great as they can be. You’d be surprised how much better your life can be if you drop all of this pointless drama in the lives of the rich and famous, and see what’s around you that matters far more.
Tiger Woods is a great golf player, and his personal life has NOTHING to do with my enjoyment of golf, or my ability to watch him play 18 holes… Same goes for music, and movies. I don’t care what Tom Cruise did for vacation, or that him and Kate whatever her name is broke up. It doesn’t affect how good he is in the movies he plays in.
So why care about their personal lives?
Temporary Site Issues
Well, apparently I really don’t talk in here anymore. I’m going to try to do it soon, but boy, have I been all over the place with so many different things in my life, I find it hard to find the time (or want) to sit here and talk about something.
But, as of right now there is an issue.
Some of you may immediately notice (well, the geeks would), that my address bar is currently showing a different domain name.
Well, I have been thinking about moving to a new serverhost for some time now, and finally decided yesterday to move. First things I did was pull down my site, and pull down all my database… And then waking up this morning, I discover that ALL of my sites on the old host, are no longer working. The issue has turned out to be “too many connections” for the mySQL databases… Which doesn’t make sense at all, honestly.
So, irony aside, I’m in the process of moving all of the sites over to the new host, as well as sending the domains over as I get the sites up and running.
For the time being, Blackened Sun is going to be listed at wordpress.hopvault.com … As soon as the new DNS is officially set for my new host, I’ll bring blackenedsun.com back over completely.
This has been one miserable 24 hours of trying to deal with all of this.
Patience, s’il vous plait 