I see this BS reasoning every 4 years. Which boils down to “I agree the coverage is bad, but they paid a lot of money and they need to make it back!”.

First of all, no one held the CEO of NBC at gunpoint and forced them to buy rights for the games. They paid that price for those rights fully expecting to profit the maximum amount possible, not because they are providing a public service.

Second, it makes the customer responsible to know the inner workings of NBC to make a judgement on how to evaluate the final product. If someone on the high dive has a crappy dive because their dog died that morning they don’t get a pass or bonus points. NBC’s crappy presentation and the garbage the average consumer has to put up with up doesn’t get a pass because NBC corporate needs to make the bottom line. Which goes into a bigger spiel about making the shareholders happy but not the customer.

Of course the IOC doesn’t get a pass on this either. Oh sure they probably don’t approve of the presentation NBC chooses, but they do like that they pay a ton of money for the coverage and then turn a blind eye to how it’s covered.

Bottom line is NBC just failed to deliver and “insightful” commentary like yours doesn’t help one bit. If anything it just excuses them.