Olympics TV coverage in U.S. - Nordic on USA Network

The press release:
http://www.sportsfeatures.com/index....=show&id=28214

The write up for USA NETWORK:
USA Network, available in 89 million homes, is the cable home of the
U.S. Olympic Team featuring live Olympic coverage in the mornings and
afternoons with 101.5 hours of predominantly live coverage of Team USA
in the Winter Games' two team sports: ice hockey and curling. All Team
USA hockey games, both men's and women's, will be seen live, the
majority on USA Network. USA Network will also feature a live curling
match 11 of the 12 days of the Olympic curling tournament and live
Nordic events. In total, 22 Olympic medals will be determined on USA
Network.

Bill Macatee will serve as studio host for USA Network's Winter Olympic
coverage.

The announcers:

CROSS COUNTRY
Play-by-Play: Al Trautwig
Analyst: Paul Robbins
Reporter: Dwight Stones

BIATHLON
Play-by-Play: Len Berman
Analyst: Chad Salmela

I don't want any complaining from any of you on Al Trautwig as the
play-by-play guy for the Olympic xc events... I like his xc coverage
and his OLN TDF work too. He's been doing xc since the '94 Lillehammer
games at least, so he's one play by play guy who actually knows
something about xc. They should have brought in Phil Ligget too. He was
great on ski jumping and nordic combined. Does anyone know if he's part
of that coverage?

J Tegeder
"On the podium it the right people don't show up!" JT

Looks like we get Marty Robbins again. Personally I don't think he was
very good in 02. Seemed to be a few steps behind the racers. I
remember him going on and on about how the women were just skiing easy
together as Belmondo is in the middle of making a break after her pole
problem (which they missed too). I thought Dwight Stones was good and
they have used him more.

I checked out nbcolympics.com and they have the schedule posted (along
with some video clips and pretty good XC page for the newbie). XC
coverage is all on NBC not USA and we get nothing live. I would bet
that in NBC's mind this is an improvement, the major network and some
prime time. But biathlon gets live coverage on USA while XC will get
highlights sandwiched between clips of ice skaters warming up. Maybe
we should have voted less.

Luckily I get CBC and would guess they will have good coverage.

Dave

On 01/12/2006 05:27 PM, in article
,
" wrote:

I don't want any complaining from any of you on Al Trautwig as the
play-by-play guy for the Olympic xc events... I like his xc coverage
and his OLN TDF work too. He's been doing xc since the '94 Lillehammer
games at least, so he's one play by play guy who actually knows
something about xc. They should have brought in Phil Ligget too. He was
great on ski jumping and nordic combined. Does anyone know if he's part
of that coverage?


Trout doesn't know dick about cycling, and his "performances" on OLN are
almost as bad as the late Adrian Karsten's were on ESPN in the mid-1990s.



--
Steven L. Sheffield
stevens at veloworks dot com
bellum pax est libertas servitus est ignoratio vis est
ess ay ell tea ell ay kay ee sea eye tee why you ti ay aitch
aitch tee tea pea colon [for word] slash [four ward] slash double-you
double-yew double-ewe dot veloworks dot com [foreword] slash

Definitely. I'll never forget Al rhapsodizing lyric about the Japanese
(kodo?) drums in between shots of skiers slipping their way up the hills
of Nagano.

Gene

wrote:

I don't want any complaining from any of you on Al Trautwig as the
play-by-play guy for the Olympic xc events... I like his xc coverage
and his OLN TDF work too. He's been doing xc since the '94 Lillehammer
games at least, so he's one play by play guy who actually knows
something about xc. They should have brought in Phil Ligget too. He
was great on ski jumping and nordic combined. Does anyone know if
he's part of that coverage?

J Tegeder
"On the podium it the right people don't show up!" JT

Al Trautwig, we must complain if only to keep certain traditions alive.
Hopefully the coverage matches the Salt Lake coverage, which was excellent.

Jay, one arm or not my goal is that this is not the year you stuck around
long enough to beat me.

See you in Europe

The FrontRunner



wrote in message
ups.com...
I don't want any complaining from any of you on Al Trautwig as the
play-by-play guy for the Olympic xc events... I like his xc coverage
and his OLN TDF work too. He's been doing xc since the '94 Lillehammer
games at least, so he's one play by play guy who actually knows
something about xc. They should have brought in Phil Ligget too. He was
great on ski jumping and nordic combined. Does anyone know if he's part
of that coverage?

J Tegeder
"On the podium it the right people don't show up!" JT

Thanks for the correction. It's mostly 4-5 pm and 12-1am, all replays
and in some or most cases clips.

Gene

"DMK" wrote:

I checked out nbcolympics.com and they have the schedule posted (along
with some video clips and pretty good XC page for the newbie). XC
coverage is all on NBC not USA and we get nothing live. I would bet
that in NBC's mind this is an improvement, the major network and some
prime time. But biathlon gets live coverage on USA while XC will get
highlights sandwiched between clips of ice skaters warming up. Maybe
we should have voted less.

Luckily I get CBC and would guess they will have good coverage.

Dave

Al Trautwig on OLN is much better than no cycling coverage on OLN if we
complain...

J Tegeder
"Keep training, lycra never lies!" JT

Gene Goldenfeld wrote:
The press release:
http://www.sportsfeatures.com/index....=show&id=28214

The write up for USA NETWORK:
USA Network, available in 89 million homes, is the cable home of the
U.S. Olympic Team featuring live Olympic coverage in the mornings and
afternoons with 101.5 hours of predominantly live coverage of Team USA
in the Winter Games' two team sports: ice hockey and curling. All Team
USA hockey games, both men's and women's, will be seen live, the
majority on USA Network. USA Network will also feature a live curling
match 11 of the 12 days of the Olympic curling tournament and live
Nordic events. In total, 22 Olympic medals will be determined on USA
Network.


Gene,

I sense in your post grwast concern that a US TV network wil break its
centuries-old traidition of boycotting showing nordic events and will
start showing them.

I think your concern is over-rated. If you look over NBC's detyalied
daily schedules, you will be happy to see that there will be NO
coverage of cross-country skiing and nordic combined whatsoever. Except
that NBC may tell the viewers the names of the winners, if they feel
magnanimous on that day.

There seems to be good coverage scheduled for about half of biathlon
events on USA network. However, the thought of showing top-notch
athletes to overweight Americans is so appaling and insulting that I am
sure NBC will find ways to pre-empt the coverage of biathlon with
emergency breaking events like the 1-hour upclose and personal on the
problems that the US curling team has finding clothes in the stupid
backward country of Italy that would fit their ennormous stomachs.
Evidently italy discriminates against extremely obese American
athletes, because no italina is as fat and there no clothes of the
apporpriate sizes.

Or there may be a bonus showing of the women's hockey gasme between
zxanzibar and Tadjikistan, wghich is certainly much more important to
American viewers than th biathlon or cross-country ski finals.


Bill Macatee will serve as studio host for USA Network's Winter Olympic
coverage.

The announcers:

CROSS COUNTRY
Play-by-Play: Al Trautwig
Analyst: Paul Robbins
Reporter: Dwight Stones



Wonderful group of experts. especially the high jumper Dwite Stones. I
hear Dwite even knows that cross-country skiing is done on snow!
Although he is still unsure what the concept of 'snow" means.

When asked about waxing in particular, Al Trautwig said: "I know all
about it. My wife does it at least every 3 months. Oooh, that's
painful. Do skiers do that too? What heroic people!"

I am sure we, the nordic skiing fans, would learn a lot from these NBC
experts. Too bad they will never get to strut their stuff...



BIATHLON
Play-by-Play: Len Berman
Analyst: Chad Salmela


I wonder if these two have finally found out which event - swimming,
running or cycling - is dropped when we go from olympic triathlon to
olympic biathlon? Can't wait for them sharing these revelations with
us, the long-time biahtlon fans.

FrontRunner wrote:

Al Trautwig, we must complain if only to keep certain traditions alive.
Hopefully the coverage matches the Salt Lake coverage, which was excellent.



Was there actually some coverage of Salt Lake nordic skiing and/or
biathlon? Really?!

I feel guilty. I must have gone to the bathroom to take a leek when
this "coverage" took place. I should learn to pee in less than 10
seconds during the Olympics or I will agian miss ALL the NBC coverage
of nordic events...