6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

I'm glad, for one thing, that I didn't buy an HDTV with an eye to watching the Olympics. The coverage has been simply awful, and I'm not the only one to notice.

Larry Gerbrandt, a television analyst from AlixPartners LLC in Los Angeles, had just bought a 50-inch plasma TV and invited his friends over for a party to watch the opening ceremonies in high-definition.

Instead, the HDTV feed initially offered only highlights from the 2002 Winter Olympics (news - web sites), he said. When 2004 pictures eventually arrived, they weren't narrated by Bob Costas and Katie Couric, he said.

"Instead of treating the HDTV customer as a premium viewer, they've been treating them like throwaways," Gerbrandt said. "NBC blew a chance to showcase and really sell HDTV."

I hadn't been paying close attention -- I'd leave the TV on while we had friends over the last couple weekends -- but when I read King Kaufman's commentary on Salon, it immediately rang true. Monday, Kaufman ran some letters from readers that neatly encapsulated the problems with the coverage, citing constant interruptions, inane editing, twenty-four-hour-plus tape delays, inexplicable jumping from event to event, and complete lack of synchronization with the NTSC broadcast. But perhaps the funniest -- and most damning -- take came from reader John O'Brien:

As an HD viewer, I may have an insight into why NBC's overall coverage is better than average: They've exiled all the morons into their HD broadcast where they can do less damage.

The HD broadcasts have been bad in a way that is seldom seen in the slickly produced world of network TV. My first suspicions that my shiny new HDTV would be wasted on the Olympics came during the Opening Ceremonies -- somewhere around the S's in the Parade of Nations, they suddenly skipped back to the M's and repeated the parade from there. This may have gone on all night in an endless loop. When I tuned in the next morning, they were still showing the Parade of Nations.

You wouldn't know it from the breathless hype they are giving the HD coverage on the other channels, but the HD stuff is on a 24-hour delay. You might think this would lend itself to gross over-production (see NBC's coverage of the Sydney Olympics), but so far as I can tell, the HD broadcast isn't being produced at all. Sometimes the events are shown out of order.

Often they jump from one event to another, without a bridge to explain what is going on. Sometimes events are repeated "Teletubbies" style. They finish showing one race, someone's toddler obviously shouts, "Again! Again!" and they show the exact same race again. Sometimes they don't show anything at all, instead filling massive blocks of time with a repeating montage of the same 10 images of Greek tourist attractions. (Two of these images feature donkeys. In any given one-hour period, these donkeys are shown roughly 200 times apiece.)

The crowning moment for the HD coverage came during the men's all-around gymnastics final (Wednesday night for regular viewers, Thursday for the HD audience). Announcer Paul Sunderland became more and more frustrated with the completely random way the producers were deciding what to broadcast.

During the fifth rotation, the camera became fixated on Romanian Marian Dragulescu wrapping his wrists for his next event. After several minutes of this, Sunderland finally lost it and started complaining on air: "There's gymnastics going on out there! The event is still going on! Why are they showing this! They're showing this because they are STUPID!" (I'm paraphrasing, but pretty closely)

Remember, this was broadcast the next day. In 24 hours, the producers at NBC-HD didn't have time to edit out a smackdown by their own play-by-play guy? Pathetic. But pure comedy gold.

It's a pity the incompetent production has driven away all but the most donkey-fixated viewers from the HD coverage by now, since Sunderland and the other announcers are actually doing a fine job. If you can get to an HD TV, it's worth checking out a little of the broadcast. Such a pure expression of the Olympic ideal of amateurism will probably never again be seen on a U.S. network.

This is appalling stuff. My sister actually ponied up for an HD set specifically for the Olympics, and I have to think she's wondering why now.