Who else is sick of beach volleyball? and other NBC Olympics coverage gripes.

My son and I are huge Olympics fans. We watch all the prime time TV coverage every night. Barring major disasters, this is one of only two things I ever turn the TV on for (the other is presidential debates). So I anticipate the Games with high expectations whenever they come around.

And I would have to give NBC terrible marks for their coverage:

•  unstoppable inane and inept babbling commentary (“And here at the end of the routine, here comes the dismount.” “You see that space? That’s the space!” “The only way to win this race is to put all the other competitors behind you.”)

•  relentlessly U.S.-centric coverage (ABC used to let us see the best athletes, but NBC seems to think only Americans are of interest to Americans)

•  lopsided programming choices (how boring is the pommel horse? why did we have to wait until about day 10 to see anything on the still rings?)

•  dumb editing—if they’re being selective anyway, why so many prolonged shots of an athlete sitting still and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, when they could cut for even just a few minutes to an event that we can glimpse in the background?

•  overwhelmingly disproportionate attention to just two women in beach volleyball—the same two, over and over, including a full hour of prime time last night, making us watch all their hugging, jumping about, rolling in the sand, and screeching directly into the camera with messages for their friends back home—while shortchanging or entirely overlooking all kinds of potentially interesting events in which the U.S. does not have a big presence

•  packing the whole thing with such a dense barrage of commercials that it almost seems as if the coverage were one long commercial break with occasional interruptions for event coverage

Yes, I’m annoyed and disgusted, but I keep on watching, and I guess that’s all they care about. I’d just like to bitch about it and hear your bitches to make me feel better.