Why Living in the Mountains Sucks...Especially during the Olympics

Since moving to Colorado, one of life's biggest adjustments has been to watch sports and shows on TV two hours earlier than I used to. Sometimes its not a problem, like when I can watch a "Workaholics" or "Breaking Bad" rerun the same night and be done well before midnight. Then, there's no worries about hitting the sack at a decent time. But catching sporting events before getting off work can be a challenge sometimes. It's been strange, but I've gotten used to it after two months.

Nothing could have prepared me for the Olympics, though. NBC's tape-delay strategy has officially ruined my life. Yes, the tape-delay in general is terrible. I knew that the men's 4x100 freestyle relay had lost to the Frenchies well before I actually got to watch it on TV. Everyone in the states is experiencing that. But NBC is executing such an awful tape delay that those of us in Colorado (and even worse in the pacific zone) aren't even up to date with half the U.S. on getting to see prime-time events.

According to the NBC commercials I've seen, the broadcast begins in the Eastern time zone at 7:30 p.m. (yes, everything is still advertised in terms of the east here). That would mean the broadcast would normally start at 5:30 in Colorado. Not so with the Olympics. After the 7:30 start in the east, every other time zone's broadcast begins at 6:30 p.m. For people in Chicago, this is all normal. They're up to date just like they normally would be. But for everybody further west, we can't even view already-old events with our American peers. They have to get even older.

It's one thing to hear on Twitter that France beat the U.S. in similar fashion to the way it lost in Beijing. It's quite another to hear that, then hear from everyone east of Colorado about how the race looked, and how Ryan Lochte did this, or Michael Phelps was super fast!

This delay nonsense worked out alright in 2008 for NBC. It's been a disaster in 2012. We're a different species than we were then. As the Olympics show us every time they come round, with brand new gymnasts, swimmers struggling to retain what they once had (like Phelps in the 400 individual medley) and even basketball rosters shifting (Kevin Durant wasn't on the 2008 U.S. team!), four years is a long time.