• Show more sports, less of everything else.
  
  
• I don't care what athletes think about what they've just done. What they have to say is almost always completely uninteresting and totally cliched. The very rare times that someone's response is compelling or evokes emotion from this viewer, does not justify the time this stuff takes up. I go along with showing a certain number of medal ceremonies, and that should be enough. Stop the after-event interviews, they're a waste of time.
  
  
• Even worse are the up-close and personal profiles, but it seems to me that there are less of them then I remember, and (perhaps) they are not quite as cloying and oversentimental as they once were. Nevertheless, bag them altogether, unless they actually tell us something that we need to know to enjoy the competition.
  
  
• Same goes for almost every other "human interest" story. The human interest of the Olympics is that someone wins, and someone loses, your country wins, your country loses. The other stuff is unnecessary and boring.

Nothing particularly earth-shattering about those complaints, I guess. Some may be surprised that one standard complaint is missing -- the one about how the US television coverage focuses too exclusively on American athletes, but I find that to be a utterly ridiculous complaint.

Addenda: So far, nothing has attracted my attention the way that curling did in the winter games, I've been happy enough watching the mishmash of events that NBC is presenting (although finding them when they're spread out over 5 English-langauge channels -- NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, USA -- is sometimes annoying). I do suspect, though, that my wife may be of the opinion that I watch the beach volleyball matches a little too closely.

Another thing -- who is responsible for the terrible version of "The Star Spangled Banner" being used for medal ceremonies? (It's the same one every time, so I assume the U.S. Olympic Committee made the choice.) Our national anthem is perhaps not the best one in the world, or the easiest song to sing (because of the range of notes it requires), but it can be quite dynamic and exciting, and moving as well, but the recording being used is flat and boring and its only dynamic is to suddenly get quiet and sentimental in the middle (I think it's around "And the rockets red glare"), which saps all the energy out of it.

I understand the desire in the context of the Olympics not to use an overly martial arrangement, even though I think the cymbal crashes are the best part of most versions, but surely they could have come up with something that was more exciting (and moving than they cruddy one they're using now. Ten demerits for the USOC (and two more for having lousy websites).