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Open Letters
Dear NBC-
I have really been digging the Olympic coverage. Seriously good stuff. My beef with you is your horrible coverage of the gymnastics team finals. Yes, I am totally the gal that usually just watches gymnastics in the summer & figure skating in the winter. I do enjoy watching other sports- diving, swimming, even that Saturday boat race thing was cool. But honestly- I am all for gymnastics. Your coverage begins at 8 and ends after midnight. There is a brief break for local news and then usually there is continued coverage at like one thirty am.
That is a lot of air time.
Plus there is a time delay and space to do some editing.
So can you please tell me why the final team gymnastics showdown didn’t start aring until around 11pm the other night? And can you tell me why you aired over an hour of men’s beach volleyball BEFORE covering gymnastics? I mean I get that we are meant to watch ALL sports, but seriously. Men’s beach volleyball? Don’t you realize that there are little girls staying up late on a school night waiting for the good stuff? (and, ahem, 32 year old girls too)
I couldn’t stay up that late so I set my dvr to record things. And my dvr cut off right at midnight. So I never got to see the floor routines. I only ever saw U.S.A. and China do like 3 rotations. No other countries. What the hey, NBC?
Please fix this before the individual competition airs for gymnastics.
Thank you in advance-
A Gymnastics Fan
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Dear Kraft-
I have been a long time lover of your mac & cheese box product. Seriously it got me through some tough times. I also am a pretty basic fan of crackers. When I heard that you guys were coming up with a Mac & Cheese Cracker I was interested. And then I saw your commercial and was very turned off.
In your ad you give an adorable kid a mac & cheese cracker and then they smile and appear to rise up on liquid yellow liquid stuff. I imagine you were going for some sort of visual on how profound the flavor is. It is so WOW that the kid is lifted up into the sky.
But I imagine if you put this ad in front of a test panel before airing it you might have found out that it looks more like eating the cracker gives kids the yellow runs.
Please fix this or at the very least please do not air the commercial on any channels that I watch.
Thank you.
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25 Responses to “Open Letters”
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Umm, CBC. I was complaining about the gymnastics coverage. There was too much, and no equine coverage at all!
I’m with you 100% on the Olympics thing. It’s driving me nuts! I like the swimming, too, but I don’t even get much of that before I pass out (and I don’t have a DVR)! I don’t give a toot about beach volleyball (and it’s been on EVERY night, for the record, that I’ve watched), and I know that NBC is probably doing it that way to get people with the “whatever” sports during prime-time, and keep the viewership late into the night, but it sucks, and in the end, I just don’t get to see my favorites. RAWR.
The public transit people around here got my letter. Not “open,” but via e-mail, I was just THAT pissed off. (I think I’ve sent complaint e-mails maybe 3 times in my life.)
Yes, staying up to try to watch the gymnastics has been brutal and is it really “live”? They did finally end up showing more gymnasts last night, but it wasn’t until about 1:00 am here. I definitely do not need to see another full match of May/Walsh. I miss the days when they showed a lot of equestrian and even some weight-lifting and boxing. Where is the variety? I also agree on that Mac and Cheese commercial. Totally gross.
I agree that the late gymnastics are annoying, but remember that China is 12 hours ahead of us in the Eastern time zone. And they try to show the competitions live when they can, and in order to show them live here before midnight would mean they would have to compete before noon in China, which would be impossible.
“NBC has paid $3.5 billion for the exclusive U. S. television broadcasting rights for the 2008 Olympics. In doing so, NBC has requested that some events such as swimming and gymnastics be held in the early morning hours in Beijing to they could be broadcast live during prime time in the U. S. market. This scheduling has irked some of the athletes.”
I don’t know why I’m de-lurking to comment on this, but here it goes
While I have issues with the coverage of the Olympics (i.e. were the USA and China the only two teams competing in the gymnastics team finals, because that’s all they showed)… but I’m pretty sure that the team finals and all-around finals for gymnastics are shown live. The reason (I believe) that they start so late for us on the East Coast of America is because it’s 11am in China, therefore, 11pm in the US. But, yeah.. it sucks that it’s late, because I keep getting wrapped into watching it, and end up going to bed entirely too late.
All I can say about the Kraft commercial is that I haven’t seen it, and now hope never to.
Okay, back to lurking
Our biggest issue is with the commentators on the gymnastics and swimming. It is driving Matt crazy when the one guy calls the end to the swimming races when it is clearly obvious who is going to win, but they haven’t yet. He ends up shouting “just wait five more seconds!”
We also have an Olympics complaint — why do all the commentators a) sound like they just started learning about the sport the day before b) sound overly critical and bitter and c) talk about Michael Phelps non-stop, even when he is not actually competing.
Also — what’s up with the commentators telling us about a mistake before we’ve even seen the footage? Last night during the men’s all-around, after a guy made a mistake they were like “And if that wasn’t bad enough, he makes another mistake later!” Can’t they wait for us to see it? I’ve been tempted to watch it on mute. Am I the only one who feels this way?
i have a local-news olympics complaint…
this gypsy is from the hometown of Michael Phelps *AND* Katie Hoff… our local reports always put the “golden-boy/michael phelps is jesus christ walking on water” spin when they say “he is AMAZING” and then….
THEN!!!
no lie… after Katie Hoff had done two swims, and taken SILVER in each, they spoke of it in low hushed tones and how she didnt make it to the gold.
ummm. HELLO?
SILVER. she freakin’ PLACED in the Olympic Competition. what the hell can YOU do in the pool? so i have been on a ~*~Katie Hoff Rocks~*~ campaign.
why is it only good enough if you break all the freakin’ records and get ONLY golds? she is 16 and a kickass athlete to even BE there to compete.
you know…i was going to write a letter to the local news stations. i think instead i will write one to Katie and tell her how proud i am of her!!!
PS ~ i am pretty enamored with Michael Phelps as an athlete….. but just honestly hate the “not good enough” vibes and tone of the Katie Hoff reports… (not a Phelps-bashing)
My letter would be to Brawny, who does that ad for paper towels where they call a mom “crazy” and “nuts” for 1)letting twin babies feed themselves, 2)letting a toddler try a big kid cup, and 3)letting one’s husband be in charge of the dishes. Because OF Course everyone in the family besides mom is a FREAKING IDIOT! No one can be left in charge of anything besides mom, even though it is eating away at her that she has to do freaking everything herself. Thanks, Brawny, for portraying wives/moms as uptight, obsessive lunatics and husbands/dads as incompetent buffoons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5sAwLT4YLo
Can I sign on to your NBC letter? We watched a ton of volleyball, diving and swimming last night and had to go to bed before gymnastics - I was so annoyed. NBC executives are terrorists. How dare they try to force us to watch all those other sports just because they know they’ve got what we want at the end?!
I had the same frustration about the gymnastics coverage! I just reset my DVR to extend all the future recording times by 90 minutes so I’ll get to see the whole competition. Also, I tried to watch the end of the men’s competition online and couldn’t get their program to work. Ah. Thanks for allowing me to bitch.
My open letter would be to Secret and that freakin’ ANNOYING commercial with that woman raising her arms all the time. And then, she sniffs and rubs her pits in public. Gimme a break!
hear hear!
I mean seriously? I keep twittering that I’m SO OVER beach vollyball! With a 12 hour delay, you think SOMEONE would be able to keep the cameramen away from the bikini clad beach vollyball.
UGH.
I’m with you - we stayed up till 12:30 last night (central time) and I’m hurtin’ today.
I think they’re showing everything “live” or close too though, and since the USA men’s rotation didn’t start until 11 am ish Beijing time, that’s why it wasn’t on until 11 pm ish Eastern time. I can’t decide if I like the fact that it’s live when I watch it, or if I would just rather the Olympics be somewhere so obnoxious with the timezones that we couldn’t watch it live if we wanted to. At least it only happens every 2 years…
I was annoyed as well with the lack of sleep and crap hours. Until I found the interet. nbcolympics dot com has all of the things you could possibly want to watch on there with no commericals. And they don’t break up one sport to show you another sport going on somewhere else. It’s pretty freaking amazing. That’s my vote.
Live! On Tape! It’s the Olympics! If you can stay up that late!
Hello, maybe we could pre-empt some daytime nonsense to show the games…?
Ye gods I wish I had internet access during the day…
oooh sherri - i’m signing your “Secret” commercial letter. what an idiotic commercial. dont forget her saluting the doorman. GET YOUR HANDS UP! ugh.
totally with you on the Olympics coverage! here in SA all the good stuff is broadcast between 1 am and 4 am in the morning! I love the gymnastics and the diving and have not got to watch any of it cos the coverage has been so shyte! I could not care less for handball, volleyball, soccer and fencing - give me the good stuff already!!!!
My letter is to Brother (the printer and sewing machine people)
I want to know why it is significantly cheaper for me to buy a brand new printer (that prints faster) than replace the drum in my (otherwise working perfectly) 7 year old Brother laser printer.
What am I supposed to do with my own printer?
Now that I think if it I really should send this straight to Brother…
L
Dear Alton Brown,
Tell me about your lemon curd recipe. Because I followed it to the letter, and it never firmed up enough to be lemon curd. It’s a delectable lemon sauce, and as such I’ll enjoy it. But the fact that it steadfastly remained liquidified means that I didn’t get to use it as filling for Elle’s birthday cake.
So I think it would be most helpful if you would make a few clarifications to the recipe, such as how the pats of butter you stir in until each pat is melted before you stir in the next pat are actually supposed to melt in the ever rapidly cooling lemon sauce mixture. Instead of telling me what it’s supposed to look like after I do the double boiler portion, perhaps you should tell me what temperature it’s supposed to be at.
I’m not complaining about the taste, trust me. I just about swooned when I dipped the spoon into the empty pan and tasted the scrapings. I just want to know how to get it to the right texture and consistency.
Yours truly,
Here Here!
I needed that! I was thinking the very same thing last night as I missed the gymnastics coverage by minutes. I saw the tail end of it. Had I not fallen asleep I would have seen it. Damn.
Cheesy runs = will not buy product
Yeah, I was ticked off about the gymnastics coverage too and didn’t watch the team final because it was 10:10 and they were just FINALLY starting to show semifinals… not even finals… of swimming. The coverage said it was starting at 8, but they kept claiming it was live, which meant that they knew what time it started and that time wasn’t 8 A.M. Beijing time, or else, it wasn’t live and they were just stringing it out.
My other beef… I did stay up to watch the women’s all-around gymnastics. The reporter in the studio with Bela Karolyi seemed to remember the names Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson, but then referred to “the Romanian girl” and later, “the Chinese woman.” Hello??? If you are reporter, would it kill you to actually learn the names of the women competing? Or is there no one in the studio who could whisper them to you? It was really pretty insulting to Steliana Nistor and Yang Yilin. See? They have NAMES!
I am going to write to NBC to gripe.
apparently, I’m the only one who saw the mac-and-cheese cracker commercial — I was going to say that it looked like vom, but yellow runs are right up there as well. it’s funny — it’s the only commercial I’ve seen in weeks, bleh.