The Olympics--Dear NBC

Dear NBC,

I understand, really I do.  In order to get as many people watching as possible you need to go for those "prime-time" hours.  Yes, I keep falling asleep in the middle of the event I really wanted to see but whose fault is that for having a job requiring me to be up and leaving the house soon after 7am?  Fault mine.  I do secretly wish programming would start at 7pm but I'll just keep that a secret for now.

What I don't understand is the coverage last night of gymnastics.  Not coverage of the CURRENT Olympic games but the at least 20 minute recap of years gone by.  What?!  I changed the channel and went to "Say Yes to the Dress".  I kept flipping back and forth and yet still there was the story of years gone by.  I was getting frustrated by then.  I know there had to be other sports that had contests yesterday in the 2012 Olympics but no, you chose to focus on years gone by.  I will admit, I didn't watch so maybe you tied it all together nicely.  I hope you did.  I just refused to watch.

I'm just one person, sitting at home in California, wanting to cheer on the Olympiads.  Your monopoly on the Olympic games meant that I couldn't do that...because by the time we got back to the recap of the days events, well, I was tired and I had disconnected from the Olympics.  Sure I tried.  I watched diving, I watched swimming, I think somewhere in there was coverage of shot put and maybe some volleyball, maybe running?  The drive, the enthusiasm, the WANT to really stay awake and watch the coverage by then had died.

NBC, I know you've paid all of the commentators a lot of money to be at the Olympics.  You've spent a lot of money on the newscasters and want to give them their time.  I get it.  I just won't watch the human interest stories from years gone by.  I'll change the channel and maybe hop back.  Or maybe I'll just search the internet and find YouTube videos or recaps of the events there.  It's not the same as taped, edited coverage with announcers who seem out to build up our expectations of one athlete in each event and then be completely surprised by the performance of another, but it's something.

Now, I've got to go see if I can find that runner from Cameroon that I saw for 10 seconds of actual coverage yesterday and see when she's running again.  I need to cheer her on for my Office building mate.  I'm hoping the World Wide Web will have some coverage of that race because NBC, I've lost trust in you.

Sincerely,
A want-to-be 2012 Olympic Viewer