TiVoing the Olympics

February 10, 2006 7:47 PM

What's the best strategy for TiVoing the Olympics?

I live in the Northwest and much prefer the Canadian coverage. I don't want to wind up with hours and hours of watching the American athlete who comes in fourth in luge. I'd like to come home and have a couple of hours of either highlights or an interesting competition that may or may not include Americans. I'm much more interested in watching a competition that has interesting story behind it rather than any one particular sport or just rooting for the Americans.

Searching through "Pick programs to record" doesn't help. The NBC primetime schedule seems to focus primarily on the American athletes. What's a good site that recommends interesting events and athletes and can I program TiVo to record only these particular times, events, and athletes?

I realize a similar thread (http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/30849) has been posted, but I want to set the TiVo rather than scan the channels every night.

posted by Slarty Bartfast to sports, hobbies, & recreation (3 comments total)

Seriously, as far as I know, nobody provides anything like this. NBC tried to with their infamous flop, the "TripleCast", and since then they've gone back to a packaged evening of pre-recorded sappy interview-profiles, carefully tweaked for maximum pathos in either outcome, and then showing the few minutes of the competition that feature that athlete winning or losing. You get some of the other countries' athletes if they're well-known, but mainly to set up a conflict narrative. It's all pretty disgusting, especially given any familiarity with these story-telling techniques from the reality-TV era.

So, I guess I agree with you, but have no alternate suggestions.
posted by dhartung at 10:53 PM on February 10, 2006

I can't speak for the Canadian coverage -- but the U.S. coverage (CNBC, NBC, Universal HD, USA) schedule is here.
posted by ericb at 11:17 PM on February 10, 2006

The CBC schedule is here. There will be a certain amount of focus on sports in which Canada is competing, and a certain amount of homer-ness, but not nearly as much as on NBC and there will be coverage of whole events (or the majority of events). Unless they've really screwed with the format, the CBC does a great job on the Olympics.
posted by mikel at 5:00 AM on February 11, 2006