Another Olympics over

The Olympics is over again. I've spent the last two weeks watching various sports instead of working on this or that. Now I'll have no excuse for not getting something done!

I liked the coverage of the various events at the beginning of the Olympics but towards the end it seemed like they showed more and more commercials. For example, we could only see about two-thirds of the dives in the Men's 10m Diving Final because TSN aired commercials during the other third. I found this to be very frustrating. I was able to watch almost all of the Men's 10m Diving Preliminaries so why couldn't I see almost all the dives in the final? I know that the Final was on Saturday so presumably viewership was higher but I would have been happier if fewer commercials were shown. I might have even been a bit more tolerant of the coverage if they'd broadcast new commercials but they showed the same old ones that had been showing during the entire Games.

This Olympics was broadcast by CTV and its partners TSN, SportsNet, OLN, and other non-English station. CBC has the rights to broadcast the next Olympics and while I hope that they'll have as many partners broadcasting coverage, I also hope they show fewer commercials. I know they have to make money and all but there must be a better way to balance prime-time coverage with commercials.

The Closing Ceremonies, like much of the Opening Ceremonies, focused on music. There were quite a few live performances, including a surprising one by Eric Idle! He sang Always Look on the Bright Side of Life which was very well-received by the crowd: even Kate Middleton was swaying back and forth and whistling the whistling bits!

Rio, who will be hosting the 2016 Games, did a small segment to show the world what's coming in four years. As I recall, the London segment during the Beijing games was kind of lame. The Rio segment this year wasn't so much lame as it was kind of incomprehensible because it was so much like the rest of the ceremony except in another language. I'm sure their Opening Ceremony will be compelling in its own way.