[RANT] I hate gymnastics

I love gymnastics!

They show it because there is probably a much higher viewer population for that, but also because they can show a performance it takes a couple of minutes .... the triathlon takes what, a couple of hours?

But I do agree they should cover it mre and talk about it.  Just like the did with the women's marathon I watched, they can pan to the event and cover it for a few minutes or whenever something significant happens, then break away and cover some more gymnastics or whatever ... then a few minutes later come back and check in on the triathlon, etc .... and it would be esp. entertaining and informative to cover some of the transitions ... I would certainly love to learn something from that.

wait. I'm watching the olympics right now (in GA). They aren't showing any of the tri tonight? It's on the program!!!

 im gonna be mad if thats true...

but it's all about ratings, you know that.

It's a TV friendly sport and gets huge ratings.  That's why they show it. 

Can you actually imagine the uproar if they showed triathlon instead of gymnastics?

I agree but they spent a huge amount of time showing the women's marathon.  A 2hr + event and for those that don't run much be sooooo boring.  After the American hopeful fell out I would have thought there would be enough time to transition to cover more of something else.  It was completely boring and no American even close to medaling. 

X2.  It's not rocket science as to why certain sports get more TV time.

And others especially here might not agree with me, but triathlon is boring to watch on TV, at least for me.  It's like watching a baseball game... I'm interested in the result and like watching the 9th inning of a close game, but I can't sit through the whole thing. 

Gymnastics, track & field, diving - always been the "staple" of Olympic TV coverage.  It's amazing to see how much volleyball has grown and garned TV-time (the beach bikinis certainly help).  But some sports still get none at all such as table tennis (ping pong) - probably one of the biggest sports in China.  And my "other" sport, sailing.  Hardly any coverage at all.

Somethings just are what they are.

Because people like it.

Start with this view of the games.

The television coverage is not the product.  You, the viewing audience is the product.  The "consumers" are not you, the consumers are the advertising sponsors.  

The Olympics is simply the mechanism for NBC (provider) to give access for its sponsors (buyers) to its product (viewers).

NBC only cares about events that will increase the desirability of its product to its buyers.  Therefore, you will never see much triathlon.  This is also how you end up with 6 minutes coverage of a women's TT, even when an American wins.  (Water polo is a bit of head scratcher, since 2/3 of the game is below the water and not seen.)

Gordon

Pleas ebe careful...all those Russian Tanks and stuff....SCARY!!!

If you watch the Olympics at any time other than prime time, there is hardly any gymnastics on at all.  I worked from home last week due to a back issue, and all day long it was pretty much swimming preliminaries, volleyball, water polo, whitewater kayak (awesome), and a little bit of track&field prelims. And they did cover the entire women's marathon live on Friday (although super late for the east coasters).

Yup.  The simple answer is viewership.  But why is viewership so high? 

Because a very large segment of the population gets sucked into the soap-opera that is gymnastics (and diving) in the summer olympics and figure skating in the winter olympics.  It's easy for the network to generate drama and controversy over whether an athlete's performance does/doesn't subjectively meet the expectations of the judges (and to a lesser extent, the viewing audience). 

Great athletes and amazing individuals, no doubt.

But any "sport" that the winner is JUDGED by a group of people and awarded subjective points for their performance is just bogus.

C'mon, the Chinese athlete fell on her azz in the vault finals, is crying because she knows she f'ed up bigtime and still gets bronze????  WTF??

x2  At least when I'm watching polo and some guy disappears, I can just imagine what just happened.  In synchro diving, I could care less if on eof them rotates to the right a little.  Last night they had the women's finals of 3m springboard, and the Americans were getting crushed.  I mentioned to my wife, I wish I was there and a multi-millionaire, so I could offer one of the Americans $50k to do a can-opener on their final dive, since they were not going to medal anyway.  I'd have been happy with a watermelon or cannon-ball as well.  THAT would have been worth watching.

Oh, and it gets even better with the results from the uneven bar final today ........ wait until you see THAT tonight .........

F-cking unreal.  Talk about a bullsh-t system of judging.  Just one more reason the "sport" should not be in the Olympics.