Watchdog

So there I was, minding my own business on a Friday, wrapping up a lighthearted look at NBC's over-the-top, 3,600 hours of Olympic coverage for our Sunday viewer guide, when I learn of this small bombshell:

It turns out NBC is charging a premium for its much-touted 2,200 hours of live broadband Internet video - plus special overflow TV channels for soccer and basketball - and it turns out Cablevision has not signed up for said coverage.

So as it stands, the vast majority of Long Islanders will not be watching endless hours of badminton and team handball after all.

Here is a statement from Cablevision (which bought Newsday this week):

"Cablevision is offering customers NBC's comprehensive coverage of the Olympics, from the opening to closing ceremonies, carried across their suite of networks including NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, USA and Telemundo, plus additional programming on NBC HD and Universal HD."

Here is a statement from NBC:

"A substantial majority of the industry, about 90% of multiplatform subscribers, will have access to NBCOlympics.com broadband content. Nearly every distributor, including all majors (Comcast, DIRECTV, Time Warner, DISH, Cox, Mediacom, Verizon, AT&T) are making Olympic broadband content available to their customers. To date, Cablevision has not elected to offer its customers the enhanced Olympics package."

Here is a statement from me:

I'm done for the week. Good luck, Manny. We'll miss you.

(Here is my Saturday newspaper article about the NBC/Cablevision situation.)