I had no problem with NBC's coverage. We may all be figure skating fans here, but does every American want to see OES rather than, say, Speedy Peterson land a clean hurricane for the silver in men's aerials? I don't think so. I'm a huge Olympics junkie. It's the only TV I watch (aside from other skating) and I only started watching/following skating at all because I watch all the Olympics. Every hour, every night, every Olympic year.
I wouldn't mind if NBC ran live coverage of all the competitors in MSNBC or CNBC or Universal Sports. But no way should they run it on the regular NBC channel. I tune in to watch the Olympics, and yeah, that means cheering on the US 2 man women's bobsled team go for a bronze or a historic gold/silver in nordic combined. I do love the skating. But it's not ALL that I love. I know by now if I want to see it, I'll have to find an online feed, or check it out afterward on nbc.com.
I think it would be grand if NBC ran it on another channel. But I do not think NBC should replace other olympic programming with more skating, at the expense of the other sports. And I think we should be reasonable before we start demanding that kind of thing.
For the record, I missed Alena, and think my parents would really have enjoyed her programs. It would have been great to see Joubert as well. But I keep my demands reasonable. I was really pleasantly surprised to see that NBC ran practically both the ultimate and penultimate men's groups, I was not expecting that much coverage of non-podium finishers.