Ah, the Olympics. The worldwide celebration of friendly competiton between our planet's nations. It's such a HUGE event that it must be opened with a spectacular $300 million ceremony. Well can you blame em? Okay so $300 million is quite a budget for one lousy firework-stuffed opening ceremony but hey, it's the Olympics! Why not have a little fun? I'm sure everybody stood in awe at the images of the '08 Olympic opening ceremony. I guess whoever is planning the London 2012 opening ceremony needs to get off their butt and make something happen! But, for me, the most outrageous part of the enitre Beijing Olympics (From opening to closing ceremonies) didn't involve a swimmer winning all 8 gold medals or some Jamacian athlete who made us tall people proud by smashing the 100 and 200 world records. It wasn't the U.S. upset of Chinese dominace in Gymnastics or the so-called U.S. "Golden Girls" defending their title. What stood out to me about the Beijing Olympics was how they were somewhat spoiled by something we all know, hate, and wish we could get by with out-COMMERCIALS! Last night, I counted 8 commercial breaks of about 3 minutes during the 8:00-9:00PM coverage. Over the course of this Olympics coverage, viewers have been subjected to United Airline ads that made us wanna tok, Acura commercials featuring random shit that's supposed to look like a smile, 24-hour fitness broadcasting the jerky side of athletes, Honda spokesman Mr. Stuipd-ass Opportunity, McDonalds claiming that they're cooler than winning a little-league soccer tournament, and OH YES! CAMPAIGN ADS BABY!!!! I'm seiously thinking of voting for which candidate disturbed us least during TV airtime. And most of the commercials had NOTHING to do with the Olympics! Rumor has it that NBC getrs paid $750,000 for every 30-seconds of advertisement airtime. So let's see: 3 minutes thus equals 9x750000= 6750000in ad revenue for NBC and thus in the hour of Olympic coverage I watched last night 8x6750000=$54,000,000 big ones for NBC's employees! But wait there's more. That was just for one frickin hour! I've heard that money goes to accomidations for their employees, such as a "hotel room for Bob Costas". Holy shit people. I didn't even know there was a hotel room out there which carried a multi-million dollar nightly rate. BEST WESTERN EAT YOUR HEART OUT!!!! So yeah, as you've probably guess by now, I'm certafiably pissed at NBC for jacking up the commercial breaks during Olympic coverage. I'm sick of seeing an athlete with high expectations about to perform their event only to see Jeff Merkely bitch about Gordon Smith and his drive to screw us commoners over by suppiorting oil companies. They took fucking forever to get to the 200 meter final last night! Well, I've had it! I offically call upon the Runnerspace community to boycott watching NBC this fall when their new season starts. If NBC wanted to send the message to their viewers that they're a waste of time to watch, they sure are doing so now during these Olympics! Their current Olympic commercial breaks are not only a waste of time for NBC viewers, but for the athletes as well. NBC cut out Semifinal heat 2 of the 200 to make room for commercial breaks a couple nights ago! And this is NOTHING new with NBC. During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, I watched as Apollo Ono speed-skated to a astonishing gold medal upset over South Korea. RIGHT after he crossed the finish line, the screen then shows this dumb-ass Saturn commercial of a minivan being chased through the snow by a mountain lion. NBC needs a reality check. They think they can waste their viewers time with pathetic attempts at convincing us to buy the latest Nissan or to vote for some Obama-hating senator from Arizona. We CAN do asomething here. If NBC is going to disrespect it's viewers like this, then I guess we can't watch them anymore. So I strongly urge all Runnerspacers to join me in boycotting the viewing of any NBC programs this fall (My Name is Earl, Deal or no Deal, ALL OF THEM NO MATTER HOW COOL THEY ARE!). If you don't want to partricipate, that's okay. I'm not going to waste your time with any more cheesy reasons why you should because, as an NBC viewer, I know how that feels. And so, I must go and pray that tonight's coverage is worth a damn watching. Oh and if you see that annoying Mr. Opportunity cartoon on the street, FIRE AT WILL AND SHOW NO MERCY!:-)
