Unfortunately, it might not happen. NBC and Fear Factor producers are considering pulling the show. It sounds like they thinking drinking donkey semen and drinking donkey urine might be too hardcore for television.

While they may be right — and while I surely wouldn’t let my kids watch it — let’s hope that cooler heads don’t prevail. And really, those contestants who drank donkey semen deserve their fifteen minutes of fame more than anyone.

Fear Factor Donkey Semen

Post from: EveryJoe

I’ve got a couple of different complaints.

The first big issue was that I couldn’t find the USA vs. Canada hockey game televised last night. They built it up all week as much as possible, and then I go to watch it and it’s not on. I’m hearing updates about it on Facebook but can’t find it on the TV schedule.

That issue alerted me to something else. AT&T is a sponsor of the Olympic Games and I am a proud AT&T U-verse customer. They released an expansion of their “Multi-View” to help with coverage of the Olympics. Multi-view allows you to enjoy a 4-channel picture-in-picture function so you can keep from missing anything you want to watch. The problem there is that every time I’ve tried to use the Olympic multi-view, I’ve yet to see any Olympic coverage other than on the main channel I’m watching.

The other frustration I have with Olympics TV coverage is that we don’t see these sports covered hardly at all throughout the year. With cable networks with 100′s of channels, why can’t we see more of these non-mainstream sports covered through the year? Where’s Chris Anderson’s Long Tail of TV sports coverage?

And lastly, why can’t I watch curling on TV on my DVR? I’ve yet to see it covered anywhere except on online video. Perhaps I’m too busy.

Post from: EveryJoe

image: TSN

A local reporter for NBC watched the men’s speed skating finals and approached gold medal winner, Sven Kramer, afterwards for an interview.  She began the exchange by asking him to state his name, where he was from and what even he had just won.  Ummm, what?  She had just watched the event (and it was a 5,000m race so she had AMPLE time to get the details) and it’s the ultimate in insulting to go up to an Olympic champion and ask him to identify himself.

His reaction was golden.

He first asked her “are you stupid?” and then when she pressed and told him to do it so that his ID would be on the tape he said “hell no, I’m not doing that.”

You gotta watch the video.

Okay, so it was a little rude of a response but when she got her act together and actually asked him appropriate questions (like how it felt to win gold) he was polite and finished the interview on a high note.

In case you aren’t familiar with him, Sven Kramer is probably the best known athlete in the Netherlands.  Can you imagine someone asking Michael Phelps his name, country and sport?

Post from: EveryJoe

I think I may be looking forward to this years broadcast of the games more than ever because I’m going to be able to enjoy them on my AT&T U-verse television programming. U-verse has recently released what they call a multi-view option. It provides a multiple picture-in-picture effect onscreen as you can see from the small image above.

Initially they’ve offered it for other sports and kids programming, but now they’re making another multi-view channel available just for the Olympics.

There’s so much coverage of the events it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on when sometimes, so I’m super excited about being able to see the Multi-view features with this content.

I can see what’s happening on a variety of channels and quickly switch to one of the channels instantly if I want to see what’s happening there on the larger screen.

AT&T is offering more coverage than just what’s being broadcast on TV. You can also get online coverage and mobile coverage taking advantage of the AT&T U-verse network.

Post from: EveryJoe

After browsing around the NBC Olympics website I got to noticing just how much screen real estate that Microsoft is gathering on the site. They’ve just about got every single corner of the page covered by one of their properties.

Good deal for them, and I’m sure NBC was pleased to get some sponsorship money to help with the giant bandwidth charges they’ll be seeing for the next few weeks.

Microsoft has got MSN, Hotmail, MSNBC and their own corporate website linked in from the homepage and every other page on the site.

The good news is that the Silverlight videos are all now working for me.

Good stuff!

Post from: EveryJoe

I’m really excited about the Olympics getting ready to start on 08.08.08. Even as simple as it is, I love the date it’s about to start.

One of the other things I’m looking forward to this year is the ability to really be able to enjoy the highlights of the various events that I will inevitably miss because of work or other responsibilities.

NBC has used the Microsoft Silverlight media technology to make the videos come alive.

The only problem is I’ve gone to the site now a few different times now and I’m continually prompted to download and install the Silverlight 2.0 software, which I’ve done. You know what the problem is? Firefox, or at least Firefox 3.0. As good as Silverlight 2.0 might be, I’d think Microsoft would want to make it work on Firefox wouldn’t you?

What’s the deal here. Doesn’t seem smart to me.

Post from: EveryJoe