I Hate CTV

CTV is seriously making me consider boycotting this years Olympics. If it were being held in any country other than Canada than I would have already made up my mind. Now boycotting the Olympics is not a new phenomenon - every 2 years thousands of protesters march upon whatever city is hosting the Olympics and hold their protests - largely over the hypocrisy that surrounds such an event, but that's for another post.

My beef is with CTV. When I heard that the CRTC and the IOC granted CTV the rights to broadcast the Olympics this year instead of the usual CBC I was greatly disappointed. My first disappointment meant that I had to listen to former CBC and now CTV sports caster Brian Williams awkwardly handle the desk, especially with his simply bizarre transitions, "speaking of the German bobsled team, lets go to women's Alpine events!" - UGH!

If you watch CTV at all then you cant go 15 minutes without a 5 second spot featuring some ridiculously good looking athlete standing gawking at the camera. Its annoying, they only show the same 5 athletes over and over again...it would be nice that if, in the Olympic spirit of world peace, unity and cooperation, that they showed some athletes other than the ones who could have second jobs as catalogue models. I never remember CBC doing this in the past - instead they simply showed clips of athletes in previous Olympics' donig what they do...competing.

Then came the CTV Olympic Theme Song "I Believe" by Nikki Yanofsky (I have no idea) - CTV is using this as a chance to earn as much money as they can. Opportunism at its worst. If you don't believe me check out the CTV Olympic Store - there you can find a $30 acrylic scarf (no doubt made in China - HBC your guilty of this two...nothing like celebrating human rights and national pride like outsourcing a product to a sweatshop based in a country that executes more children every year than the rest of the world executes adults combined), a $75 key chain or a $300 mini replica Olympic torch. Maybe if CTV spent less time hawking morally questionable clothing and cheap over produced music I might have a little more faith in the quality of their coverage.

But the thing that makes it the worst is that I know come Wednesday night, when I wanna watch the Men's Giant Slalom I will have to turn to TSN (a channel I don't have because I believe $50 is too much to pay per month for television) because all that is gonna be on CTV is American Idol.