WEEKLY WHINE

All glory to the sponsors

NBC, a television network that exists in the United States, is very good at its job.

Evidence of this is shown in its coverage of major sporting events. It has held the rights to broadcast the Summer Olympics on television and the Internet in the United States since 1988, and the corresponding rights for the Winter Olympics since 2002. However, it regularly airs events on a delay, and it has steadfastly refused to air the opening and closing ceremonies live. It still refuses to stream them live, despite the facts that the Internet exists and that the “context that our award winning production team will provide” does not.

NBC’s hunger for advertising money is so all consuming that it has forced the IOC to reschedule the gold medal finals of events like swimming and gymnastics to after midnight local time. It even submitted a request to the IOC [which was denied for some reason] to change the order of the Parade of Nations, believing that Americans will change the channel after the United States enters.

They will, of course.

As a result of this, NBC has sold upwards of US$1,000,000,000 in advertisements during these games. However, there are countless billions of dollars that were left on the table. We asked the GoobNet Special Projects Enhancement and Enforcement Division [SPEED] to help us identify some other ways for NBC to sweep up advertising dollars. They laughed at us.

Once they were done with that, they reminded us that during NBC’s coverage, numerous segments will undoubtedly bear the name of a sponsor. You should therefore prepare to see an automobile manufacturer sponsor a segment with a name like “Driving Performances”, a camera manufacturer sponsor a segment with a name like “Images of the Games”, and a firm that has no apparent connection sponsor a segment with a name like “What’s Trending in Rio”.

These are obviously not enough. NBC needs to add the following sponsored segments:

• The Scent of Success, presented by Yankee Candle
• Marvelous Performance of the Day, presented by Captain America: Civil War
• Super Slow Motion Replay, presented by United Airlines
• Negotiation of the Day, presented by Priceline
• An Athlete Whose Name You Should Remember, presented by Jason Bourne
• Interesting Facts about a Random Nation, presented by Rosetta Stone
• Tape Delayed Event of the Day, presented by TiVo
• Profile of an Athlete Who Totally Never Would Have Been Able to Compete in the Olympics Were It Not for the Magnanimous Intervention of a Benevolent Sponsor, presented by Gravy Train
• Dick Enberg Sits By the Fireplace and Reminisces with Bob Costas About an Event at a Previous Olympics at Which an American Did Really Well, presented by Duraflame [or possibly Fox News]
• Yet Another Way in Which We Fucked Up Our Olympic Coverage, presented by GoobNet

Wait, how did that last one get in there?

Oh, it doesn’t matter. We’ll take it.