What's On First, Who's On Second?

Perhaps by now you've heard that CTV's Olympics website has a handy-dandy viewer's guide that allows you to 'customize' your Games watching experience.

And come hell or high water, they're determined to make you use it.

How else to explain the lack of direction we get from Canada's Olympic broadcast consortium when it comes to figuring out what's on where at any given time during their coverage of the Vancouver 2010 Games.

Allow me to explain it this way. About an hour ago, the CTV Olympics Twitter feed posted a note advising that, because of delays at the speed skating venue caused by ice problems, full live coverage of the pairs figure skating short program was being shifted from Rogers Sportsnet to TSN. The men's 500-metre speed skating would stay on Sportsnet.

If any mention of that was made on CTV, I'm still waiting for it. And in my mind, when it comes to a venture of this scope and size (i.e. lots of viewing choices on lots of channels), telling people where to find what qualifies as Programming 101.

Now, I'm hardly suggesting CTV should have cut into its dissection of the all-important first practice by Canada's men's hockey team in Vancouver (yes, that was sarcasm folks). And it's a bit much to ask busy anchors such as Brian Williams and James Duthie to spend every second on the air playing traffic cop (though it is part of their job, admittedly).

But CTV and Rogers, you created this multi-network beast. It's up to you to tame it for the viewers. And no, the answer isn't just your fab programming guide at CTVOlympics.ca, because the millions of Canadians tuning in aren't all doing it with a computer by their side.
(I'm still trying to figure out how to 'customize' that guide by sport, by the way. Which doesn't seem like much to ask. But I digress).

To me — and I'm hardly the first to suggest this — the answer is remarkably simple. Put a freakin' ticker across the bottom of the screen and load up your programming updates there, along with all the latest results updates. TSN and Sportsnet wouldn't live without one during most of the game coverage I see on their channels. So why not now?

As thin as these things are these days, they do anything but intrude on the TV picture. And we all cast a glance at them every now and then.

So there you have it. Problem solved. You're welcome, folks.