When I was a kid, the Olympics were an event. Now, they’re mostly an excuse to write comic summaries.

I suspect there are a couple reasons for this. First, when I was a kid, an Olympic year occurred only once every four years, always during a US Presidential election year. The year opened with the Winter Olympics, and then the Summer Olympics provided distraction in the summer right before the party conventions and the general election campaign. (This was in the era before primaries became something to cover on TV.)

The year ended and you didn’t have to think about the Olympics for another four years. Because of that, the Olympics were a huge event.

Then, in the early ’90’s they switched to an Olympics every two years. This seemed to suck the energy and interest out of them. Bringing in professional players also hurt. When Michael Jordan originally refused to go to the podium because he’d have to wear a logo that wasn’t his regular sponsor, you could feel the Olympics die a bit. Wrapping himself in a flag and draping the flag over the logo just made it seem even more petty.

Making things worse, television coverage, at least in the USA got crappy. When I was a kid the network that got the Olympics actually showed the Olympics. All day. As a result you got to see odd sports such as archery and air rifle and the equestrian events.

Now, because there’s more money involved, the networks focus mostly on big money sports: sprints, basketball and gymnastics in the Summer Olympics; hockey, figure skating and alpine events in the Winter Olympics. Granted, the Winter Olympics is smaller with fewer events, but the Summer Olympics is huge and there’s a lot more to watch. Anything that’s not a big money sport gets relegated, if you’re lucky, to a secondary channel you hope your cable provider carries.

As if that’s not bad enough, US TV coverage usually involves lots of talking heads and interviews and music laden features telling us how hard a star athlete has worked to get to the Olympics. Then they cut to the athlete’s race and follow that up with more talk. You end up with several minutes of sport, dozens of minutes of talk and dozens of minutes of commercials.

Luckily, I’ve not had to see US coverage for a couple decades. Japanese Olympic coverage has its own quirks, and some sports can only be found by “roundabout” methods, but that’s another post.