The Winter Olympics are over and I have some 60 hours of programming to catch up on. This was the year that I decided all of the Winter Games, about 15 hours of programming a day for 16 days. I skipped through all of the subjective sports (ice skating, freestyle snowboarding and aerial skiing), but even then that's still a whole lot of stuff. Then I started skipping through all the human interest stories -- NBC did a good job and they had a lot of little shorts about the various athletes, mostly Americans but some other nationalities -- and I only got done late last night.

Now, some people complain because it's easier to complain, and they complain about NBC's coverage. I had no problems with their coverage. Yeah, they didn't show every minute of every event, they switched back and forth and delayed the finals until the prime time broadcasts, but looking at it as a whole it was a good presentation. I saw a lot of the programming and they cut out the boring parts, had good commentators, and had a flair for the dramatic.

I saw a lot of hockey games. They televised about half of the first round games, most of the second round games, and all of the medal round games. That is, for men's hockey. For women's hockey they televised about half of the first round games and all the medal round games. And NBC for the most part showed the whole game. They did put in commercials when they could, but since International Hockey only has 15-20 second stops in play the commercials tended to bleed a little into the game.

The hockey games were really good. It was great to see Team Belarus get to the second round and beat top-ranked Team Sweden during the medal round. Team Slovakia got worked because of the NHL. The NHL didn't suspend its schedule until the second round games, which meant that during the first round players for teams like Slovakia had to fly overnight right after their game to play in the Olympics, then fly back right afterwards to play in an NHL game. Really, the NHL could have taken off for an extra week or at least allowed those players to take off that extra week.

Anyway, although I don't mind all the speed sports, the only other sport that I really liked at the Olympics was Curling. NBC showed about half of the games that US teams played in. They tended to show one end (like a frame in bowling) and then skip ahead to the last two or three ends. Hey, I didn't mind because Curling is a slow paced game. The Gold Medal games were shown almost in full and that was quite long. The US women's team got into the medal round, though they lost both games and got fourth place. But it was a good try.

Ice Skating is the darling of NBC, because all the various Ice Skating events -- the pairs, ice dancing, men singles, women singles -- were shown during the prime time broadcasts. A lot of time was spent on the pairs skating controversy, where the judging was a bit suspect and a Russian pair was given the gold. I don't know if they should have given a duplicate gold medal to the Canadian pair, like I said I don't particulary care about ice skating.

Bob Costas unfortunately was not very good in these games. He anchored the prime time broadcasts and, from the little I saw of him, he looked like a fish out of water. He just seemed to be so unknowledgeable and was almost mocking some of the events. I guess he just wasn't into it, because when he's prepared Costas is a very good commentator. Hannah Storm anchored the NBC 15:00 hour daily show and she did a good job. At least she looked interested.

The third broadcast I forget who the anchor was. But he was the best of the three. He was enthusiastic and he also helped out as commentator for the hockey games. That broadcast had Summer Sanders as their person-about-town, visiting the various stores and other attractions outside the Olympic games. Again, happy and enthusiastic.

In all, it was a good Olympics. The US won 34 medals, more than at any other Winter Games ever, our previous total being 13. Sure, several of those medals were from Xtreme sports that the US sort of dominates, but we won a lot of medals in sports we haven't done well in historically. So it was exciting to see those medal wins. Maybe I'll watch the Summer Games, maybe not. But at least I paid attention for one year and watched the Olympics.