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Might as well get its own thread going as it was brought up in another thread -- specifically the trend of showing mostly crying pixies, athletes with dying relatives, or other such soap-opera worthy stories.
I wonder though if any of that gets just a teensy bit better with this telecast for several reasons.
1) The time delay isn't as severe as when they were in Beijing (5 hours vs 14) so the dance they do trying to present things as "plausibly live" -- aka: delayed on tape by half a day but shown as if it were going on at that moment and that no one in this internet age has any idea of the outcome -- won't be as laughable.
2) It's NBC's first shot at this in the post Dick Ebersol era. The former head of NBC sports may not have invented that kind of programming (see crying pixies etc. above) but certainly wasn't shy about employing it and made no excuses or apologies for laying it on as thick as possible. I suspect his fingerprints will still be all over things, but maybe whoever is in charge now won't be quite so hands-on in trying to turn each event into a reality series while ignoring everything that doesn't have an American in the final.
3) With last year's merger/buyout/marriage/whatever of NBC/Comcast, the network now has their own sports network (the erstwhile Versus and before that Outdoor Life channel) where they maybe - just maybe mind you - will take the time to show some actual sports in among their true strength of showing back-stories, flag-waving, and other network pimping. They used that channel over the last month to show more than a few hours of the U.S. Olympic trials in various sports (track, swimming, gymnastics) and that's the kind of place you can stick "minor sports" (ie: not the 'LeBron & Kobe Go to London for their Summer Vacation' show) and actually let them run without all the network needs interfering (at least not as much). It would be nice, for instance, to actually see more than 3 minutes of the decathlon for a change. Then, if they want to edit, repackage, and rebroadcast a portion of that event for the prime-time viewers on the main NBC network channel several hours later, well then they'll satisfy both halves of their audience.
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