Needless to say, I’ve been disappointed with how they’ve handled that key broadcast, from 8PM-12AM on their home network. John raises a good point: if there’s an opportunity to show a “high-drawing” event live, such as beach volleyball, then by all means, do it. For the past week and a half I’ve stayed up at least till midnight watching the main coverage, and often I have to stay up till 2AM to watch soccer games I’ve been waiting for. This is my main gripe. Some of us get tired. For someone who has to get up relatively early, and for someone who loves the Olympics, it’s a struggle staying up to watch everything you want to see. NBC, listen: as much as we all love the diving quarter or semifinals, and as much as we all were skipping Two and a Half Men reruns to watch the “closing gymnastics ceremonies.” Ha, nobody was! For those of us on the west coast, give us a live match for once. We watched those other events because we were waiting to watch Misty and Walsh win the gold. And I fell asleep, not because I’m lazy, but because I’ve been putting up with your absent-minded coverage for west coast viewers for the past week.

And John raises the most important point. If life rotates on some sort of media axis, it’s the Internet, not television. For many of us, we need to check our email throughout the day. I can count three times where casually checking websites has spoiled an important event.

Look, I give Bob Costas and NBC all the credit with pulling off what has been an enthralling Games. You just have to wonder, with 30 million people watching every night and a chance to really endear sports fans, wouldn’t you have created an all-live network? You had the USA Network practically begging for it. I say USA because that channel is at least on basic cable. I think people could have done without “Law and Order SVU” shows from six years ago (or new bombs like “In Plain Sight”) and would have rather watched Walsh and May win in real time.

If not USA, I noticed you created two channels for expanded cable subscribers: an all-soccer channel and and all-basketball channel. Why not have made one that was simply all-live? I know it sounds “nuts,” but some people would have gotten up at 4AM to watch key events. And I know these people could be the same people that post comment #238979 on a Yahoo! Olympics board saying “Phelps won! Phelps won! I’m spoiling for you.” Yeah, they could. But the die-hard getting up at 4AM are probably the same ilk that know when to keep their mouths shut and not ruin it for others. And, hey, it’s happening anyway with the east coast getting a live feed. I’m not bagging on them for posting the stories as they see fit, I’m just saying I wish we on the other side had that same coverage.