Rio 2016: Games of the XXXI Olympiad

But there is a small but. NBC, along with its cooperating cable allies, presented the 2016 Summer Olympics about as well as it can be done. There have been various trends in the past, including a dreadful period of "up close and personal' segments in the 70's we had to endure just to make it to coverage of the sporting events. NBC did it right, they gave us enough personal info to provide a little human element to the competition and then focused on the sport rather than the people. The one exception to this was the Ryan Lochte coverage. So he turned out to be a strap but I didn't need to know any more after that about his Ugly American stuff. I docked NBC one point for deviating too much from its coverage of the real events to talk with or about Lochte. Their backup/cable hosts were a little weak but they had articulate and knowledgeable coverage of the sporting events. Another sign of maturation was the willingness to focus on teams other than the U.S, I think NBC balanced the USA coverage well with coverage of the games as a whole. Bravo.