Toyota Curling
So last night I'm at the auto dealership for service. No, it's not the recall, my '07 Corolla has missed that so far, this is just for your standard scheduled maintenance.
Wait... no, I need to back up. Please excuse the forthcoming rant, 'kay?
Okay, so I love the Olympics. This year, it seems, NBC vastly overbid and stands to lose money on their coverage of the games. In order to make up some of that margin, they cut a deal with The Cable Providers wherein, in return for some financial assistance the particulars of which I have not bothered to learn, NBC has set up their online coverage of the games so that you can't watch live events or even full replays without being a paid cable subscriber.
No ability to pay to log in. No free coverage because NBC is a broadcast company whose content is supposed to be free on the airwaves. You have to already be a cable customer in order to watch their coverage.
I do not subscribe to cable. Sadly, I also do not have a digital converter box, having figured "Oh, the three things I watch, I'll just watch online anyway". More the fool, I. So, the long and short of it, no Olympics at home, and I'm pissed about it.
Back to the dealership. I'm sitting on the couch in the waiting room while they do their thing, one of the Toyota guys and I are watching ice dancing or pairs skating or whatever the hell. People wander by, watch for @15 seconds and then wander off.
USA network coverage ends, we switch to MSNBC. Women's curling is on - US vs Japan. Fuck yeah.
So the dude doesn't know much about curling, that's okay, lots of people don't. So I'm explaining the rules and strategy to him (I grew up watching curling all the time, we used to get the CBC back home and we'd watch both Olympic curling and the Tournament of Hearts and stuff) and we're having a good time. We watch 4 ends, Japan comes from behind scoring 3 points in one end, and it's a good match (eventually Japan won, but that was after I left).
But here's the weird thing: A crowd gathered.
Not a big crowd but a consistent one. There were steadily 5-6 people actively watching and talking about the match for about a half hour. These weren't just customers fiddling with laptops while they got their oil changed, in fact, most of them were employees on break who wound up watching several minutes of curling.
So who says that skating is the star of the winter Olympics?
Wait... no, I need to back up. Please excuse the forthcoming rant, 'kay?
Okay, so I love the Olympics. This year, it seems, NBC vastly overbid and stands to lose money on their coverage of the games. In order to make up some of that margin, they cut a deal with The Cable Providers wherein, in return for some financial assistance the particulars of which I have not bothered to learn, NBC has set up their online coverage of the games so that you can't watch live events or even full replays without being a paid cable subscriber.
No ability to pay to log in. No free coverage because NBC is a broadcast company whose content is supposed to be free on the airwaves. You have to already be a cable customer in order to watch their coverage.
I do not subscribe to cable. Sadly, I also do not have a digital converter box, having figured "Oh, the three things I watch, I'll just watch online anyway". More the fool, I. So, the long and short of it, no Olympics at home, and I'm pissed about it.
Back to the dealership. I'm sitting on the couch in the waiting room while they do their thing, one of the Toyota guys and I are watching ice dancing or pairs skating or whatever the hell. People wander by, watch for @15 seconds and then wander off.
USA network coverage ends, we switch to MSNBC. Women's curling is on - US vs Japan. Fuck yeah.
So the dude doesn't know much about curling, that's okay, lots of people don't. So I'm explaining the rules and strategy to him (I grew up watching curling all the time, we used to get the CBC back home and we'd watch both Olympic curling and the Tournament of Hearts and stuff) and we're having a good time. We watch 4 ends, Japan comes from behind scoring 3 points in one end, and it's a good match (eventually Japan won, but that was after I left).
But here's the weird thing: A crowd gathered.
Not a big crowd but a consistent one. There were steadily 5-6 people actively watching and talking about the match for about a half hour. These weren't just customers fiddling with laptops while they got their oil changed, in fact, most of them were employees on break who wound up watching several minutes of curling.
So who says that skating is the star of the winter Olympics?