michael phelps--how many thing he will do it?

NBC is absolutely NOT in the business of trying to provide coverage for the very tiny group of viewers that REALLY CARES about the competition minutiae of the different Olympic events and seeing every last second of every competition. And we should hope they never GET into that business. Why? Cuz they'd be OUT of business in a hurry and there would be NO coverage. We are not a big enough market to interest the kind of advert $$ needed to support such a coverage effort. Failing to provide a healthy dose of human interest and failure to edit with an eye toward providing good competitive drama without big nap gaps would simply drive off the audience that really pays the bills. Think of it a different way - how much would you be willing to pay-per-view for precisely the "afficianado" coverage we'd really like to see? I wouldn't be surprised if such an offering would cost WAY more than watching PPV football or boxing (by an order of magnitude?). How many people in the US would be willing to pay such a price? Seems to me that what you get right now for FREE represents a far greater value than what you'd get with a PPV that only had 500K viewers (and I think THAT would be a very optimistic number of PPViewers - mebbe more like 100K). So, yes it IS all about the money - thankfully.

NBC is absolutely NOT in the business of trying to provide coverage for the very tiny group of viewers that REALLY CARES about the competition minutiae of the different Olympic events and seeing every last second of every competition. And we should hope they never GET into that business. Why? Cuz they'd be OUT of business in a hurry and there would be NO coverage. We are not a big enough market to interest the kind of advert $$ needed to support such a coverage effort. Failing to provide a healthy dose of human interest and failure to edit with an eye toward providing good competitive drama without big nap gaps would simply drive off the audience that really pays the bills. Think of it a different way - how much would you be willing to pay-per-view for precisely the "afficianado" coverage we'd really like to see? I wouldn't be surprised if such an offering would cost WAY more than watching PPV football or boxing (by an order of magnitude?). How many people in the US would be willing to pay such a price? Seems to me that what you get right now for FREE represents a far greater value than what you'd get with a PPV that only had 500K viewers (and I think THAT would be a very optimistic number of PPViewers - mebbe more like 100K). So, yes it IS all about the money - thankfully.