Olympics 2012: Live Coverage

Between Mishail Husain finishing at 11.30 and the start of the open water swimming at 12 noon BBC1 showed no live coverage. They showed the Claire Balding piece about women in the Olympics (for at least the third time in the past two weeks) and played a VT about Kerri Anne Payne for the second time within an hour. All the time they relegated the Men's 4x400 metres heats to BBC3.

They don't half like to chat do they - from what I've seen they show very limited live action in the first half hour or so each day too. In this case they clearly had plenty of time to show the 4x400m, although on the whole it is good they've been willing to relegate athletics to BBC3 where appropriate - be interesting on Saturday should Tom Daley as expected by in the diving final at 8.30pm, with the athletics climaxing with the 4x100m at 9pm..

That half hour though was awful with Matt Baker having to suck up to Claire Balding about how great women are.

P.S. A little piece on ITV and the Olympics from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/09/olympics-2012-tv-coverage

It's disgraceful that they showed none of the women's javelin on BBC1 at all this evening, and nothing of the Decthlon either.

One of the only good things about Channel 4's coverage last year was the lack of talk, particularly in the morning sessions. They let the action do the talking.

Why didn't you press the red button, the coverage was on there.

It's a shame that all the other channels seem to have given up, as much as I've been into the Olympics there comes a time when I've wanted an alternative, There's not even anything I've wanted to record... the last item on my cable box is the Opening Ceremony!

In case anyone is interested, David Cameron doesn't know how to set up his TV and has it in stretchy-vision mode as demonstrated in this ridiculous PR shot posted on his Twitter earlier:

http://p.twimg.com/Az3sj1aCAAAHKf-.jpg
https://twitter.com/Number10gov/status/233602856060583936

Because that would ruin his chance for a moan.

I think the last time ITV made an effort to have an alternative schedule was during the 80's, and succeeded, when they showed all 5 episodes of the miniseries "V". But to be fair with the Olympics being in London, this time, there is basically no option for an alternative schedule as it would be the Olympics all the way. I think ITV have actually done quite well with their schedule - except for Saturday evenings when they could have shown decent family movies instead of repeats of Poirot, Marple and Midsomer Murders!!! (they could have easily put the Bond movies on during primetime instead of daytime)

He is full of **** !

He's looking a bit close to the screen too. What's the optimum distance again - 2.5 × diagonal screen size?

Because when you watch any of the other streams you get the coverage plus commentary. When you watch the athletics field event streams you don't get any commentary and it's as informative as watching paint dry. And really it isn't the point anyway. The BBC1 coverage should endeavour to cover all events within the stadium, not just the glamour track events.

Presumably there's some sort of internal network in Downing Street which is how it ended up like that. I've actually noticed a lot less stretchy-vision in recent years, which is probably down to integrated digital tuners in TVs and more modern digital boxes that actually ask what shape your TV is when you set them up as opposed to leaving it 4:3 and burying the option deep in the menus.