I hope this makes sense and wonder if anyone has had the Tara chatting on the Olympic Channel shows holding things up problem I will describe.
For Nationals and Worlds, we had skating coverage (Tara and Johnny) on NBC, usually on weekends, and selected that in high def. For extra coverage and for more obscure skating competitions, such as the Grand Prix, we supplementied with Ice Network.
Then NBC flipped the channels and we had to upgrade a few $$$ to a package that included the new Olympic Channel in order to get those more obscure competitions, such as the Grand Prix, coverage. It has basically been an even substitution in terms of coverage of The Olympic Channel for the old NBC Sports Channel, with the added bonus that the Olympic Channel is including lots and lots of stories all week long about any possible summer or winter Olympic sport, which has been kind of fascinating for this all sports fan. A few more programs, generally a one-time summary of Men's, Ladies, Pairs and Dance (the latter two if we were lucky) were still shown on NBC/HD with Tara and Johnny, as before. When reading this, I just figured out that, each week of the Grand Prix, I have seen 4 programs--all of the Shorts--on Fridays. And then 4 Longs followed each Saturday, all in Live coverage. Everything was picked up by my TIVO and I had decided too late this Fall after I re-subscribed, that it seems I don't need Ice Network any more so was going to drop it when my subscription runs out.
The only problem I have had is that during one Friday coverage, I think it was of the Men's Short, Tara was on as hostess with three other randomOlympians talking in general about what life is like being an athlete who qualifies to go to the big O. And she was so chatty and the coverage so lengthy that it chopped off the last 3 or 4 of the skaters. Grrr.
Next week, we are coincidentally switching from Verizon to Comcast for cable and phone. The original Comcast list did not include the Olympic Channel, and it was $30 more for about 100 more channels that did include it. Hopefully, should be a smooth transition.
I still believe that I really won't need Ice Network next year. Can anyone else think that I will need it?