All I can say, I LOVE watching the men's swimming....could those suits tease just a bit more ;-)....what a bunch of gorgeous bodies...can't wait for the men's diving too. Gymnastics would have been better with the men's swimsuits. Yet in the ORIGINAL Olympics...it was au naturel...now that would have been a ratings sweep IMO.

But think of the fines from the FCC!

When and if the US networks decide not to pay for 1/2 of the olympics then maybe the <b>prime time</b> coverage will not be centered around a flag.

It's simple folks. NBC paid more for television rights than the rest of the world combined. Can you blame them for doing the American show on prime time? They need to have an audience so they could sell commecial time at prime rate to at least have a shot at making their money back.

I refuse to watch the prime time NBC olympic coverage, but to my surprise the day coverage on MSNBC, BRAVO, CNBC is actually mostly live and includes everything. Today I watched 2 semi-final soccer games (Argentina beating Italy and Paraguay beating Iraq) without any commercial interuptions during the 45 minute halves. I watched track and field preliminaries and did not have to check the internet for results. They ran some of the preliminaries on prime time NBC that same evening, but again there is a good business reason to do that. Many other events. The day coerage is actualy very nice and very international.

I also realize that many people have to work during the day so it's not possible for majority to watch during the day, but I just want to be fair to the network and say it like it is.

1) I LIKE Katie. For some reason the other news program anchor people want to make me gag. The seem so unctious.

2)I wonder why they don't make car racing an olympic &quot;sport?&quot; I don't think it should be but tons of people consider it a &quot;sport.&quot; (And I live in Daytona so I should KNOW.)

3)I used to get into watching the olympics but the start of the coverage here was preempted by our hurricane so it sort of diluted the excitement.

4)Not to mention I am preoccupied with planning the trip to Italy.

PS. The only thing I wanted to watch was Ryan Lochte who is from my area.

PPS. His father coached my husband's Beach Patrol Lifeguard team for a competition one year.

Go the Aussie boys in the Baseball !!
I really love it when the Olympics throws up a surprise !

The young Michael Phelps who gave us his place on the mens swimming relay team to his teammate Ian Crocker, who had been sick earlier in the competition...now that is an athlete and a good sport.
I liked Gary Hall

Very funny about Paul Hamms voice. ..Pup is a castrato and his voice is deeper than Pauls.

Degas!!! Don't leave out &quot;tractor pull!&quot;

If Ms. Couric makes inane remarks during her commentary, then these are fair targets for criticism. But I sure would hate to see Christopher Reeve banned from making television appearances on the grounds that his legs are dangling these days.

Judging by the TV coverage here you'd think the Australians were competing in everything, so I'm not surprised at the US coverage.

So, let's get a statistical perspective on the national medal counts and figure out who are the real sports tragics:

Last medal tallies I saw (top 5, all medals): USA 72, China 51, Russia 48, Australia 37, Japan 32.

Medals per million of population:
Australia 1.37, Russia 0.33, Japan 0.25, USA 0.24, China 0.04.

Above adjusted for GDP per capita (CIA fact book) where US=1.00: Australia 2.43, Russia 1.37, Japan 0.34, China 0.31, USA 0.25.

Hm. Maybe we need to take a good hard look at our priorities. Will someone pour the red, please?

Suexx, I think there is a wee bit of difference in making fun of stumpy legs on Katie Couric and mocking Christopher Reeve..sheesh!
I wonder who would win a medal for Best Sense of Humor in the Laugh Olympics
Who would be the contenders?

Underwhelmed by NBC coverage, tired of the ads.

Wish they replayed Bravo, Telemundo late night live stuff on tape delay. Missing my rowing, sailing, football . . . . . .

The actual spectacle of the games: awesome. What a success!

Interesting website I just found...

&quot;Olympics: the naked truth&quot;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main...xartright.html

&quot;The flavour of the revived Olympics is clear from the nine sports chosen in 1896. Apart from the solecistic triple-jump, there were the fashionable pastimes of cycling and lawn tennis, the latter dating back to 1874 when it was unsuccessfully marketed under the patented name sphairistike.

For the next Olympics, in 1900, golf (won by America) croquet (won by France) and cricket (won by Britain) were added. Ping-pong (otherwise known as whiff-whaff) did not become an Olympic sport until 1988. The London Olympics of 1908 included figure skating (for women). Pierre de Coubertin, the man behind the new games, refused to have women in track or field events so, in a huff, feminists organised a Women's Olympics in the 1920s.&quot;

AAFF, that's a fair point. NBC has to put together a marketable package for prime time. That is also why it's so disjointed; the primary goal is not to show events, but to keep us watching. As you pointed out, it is frustrating for those of us who really like this stuff and are unable to watch during the day.

In 2000, the Olympics were on French television while we were traveling in France, and the coverage was so much better than what we saw when we returned to the US. Much less chauvinistic, much more enthusiastic and spontaneous. What a let down to return to the US midway through the Olympics and find the network coverage so trite and unimaginative and narrow.

I love the Olympics, though, and watch them all evening here on the west coast.

The men's swimming competition - I should say, those fabulous v-shaped bodies on the young male swimmers - makes me grab a pad of paper and fan myself. My gosh, they're gorgeous!

They just had a funny bit on ABC News tonight. To find out just how much weight a rhinocerous beetle could carry, some researcher affixed lead weights to one and had it walk on a little treadmill, increasing the weights until the beetle finally keeled over. It was able to carry an astonishing <i>80 times</i> its body weight.

Deciding if an event is really a sport or not will vary from person to person. I happen to think that beach volleyball is an extremely difficult sport, but that is just me!

The spirit of the Games is about people from all wallks of life competing to the best of their ability in their individual sports. These people are the best of the best at what they do, and we should give them credit for making it to the Olympics, even if it is in table tennis or badminton.

I do not think we have any right to criticize the events. Even the ones that look like cake would be extremely hard to do if we tried to do them at that level!

Simple and silly animated Olympics from Bruno Bozzetto, the Italian who did the <i>Fantasia</i> spoof, <i>Allego Non Troppo</i>.

http://home.datacomm.ch/marco.fernan...o/olympics.swf

Yes Mary Fran... men's swimming has my head spinning !!!! MIchael Phelps not only has a fabulous body, but a gorgeous smile too...what a sweetheart IMO! I agree with Scarlett...he did a rightous thing, giving his spot to Ian Croker. I like the Olympics, always have, hopefully always will.