Olympic Coverage

Watching the Olympics in Italy is a lovely experience. There is pretty much constant coverage on one of the (very few) Italian channels. Commercials are kept to a minimum and news and other local information is segregated into 10 minute periods at the top of the hour.
There are no warm and fuzzy “background vignettes” on any of the athletes. We don’t get to see the town where they grew up, the mayor presenting them with any town awards, or find out their favorite color. We don’t even know who their families are. We get to watch (prepare yourself for this shocker…) more than just USA teams and individuals compete. The focus is on all of the teams – or whoever is in the important heats or finals – and most all of the sports. There are sports we’ve seen in competition that I never knew were even in the Olympics (they could be newer additions to these particular Olympics, but I doubt it…)
While we do get to see quite a bit of Michael Phelps (what’s he in, like 87,000 races now?) these games are not the Michael Phelps show here. There is a broad range of athletes and games shown and far less camera hogging by annoying commentators. We’ll be sad to leave Italy for many reasons: their sports reporting is just one of them.

[Edited to add: Maybe I misspoke. The last few days, we’ve been treated to mostly Italian athletes, and while not watching their touching life stories, we are getting replay after replay of the Italian gold medal winner events. Maybe it’s because the Italians weren’t winning before…]