Silly me,
I thought the Olympics opening ceremony was today. I guess I was wrong.
As I write this, it's almost 8 pm Beijing time, but I'm not in Beijing. I'm in the USA and it's almost 5 am. I guess I care more about this Olympics because I've gotten so many friends in Beijing over the years. And I wanted to share the moment of the opening ceremonies with them, the ceremonies that are happening now as I'm typing. But nowhere on the TV schedule do I see the Olympics broadcast live this morning. Did I miss something?
And now I'm remembering my youth when world-wide broadcasting was new, and when Olympics were on all times night and day in order to broadcast them live. Is this a false memory?
So then I thought I'd be clever and go to the Canadian Broadcasting site and try to stream it from there. It would seem that our socialist neighbors to the north not only have health care but live Olympic coverage. But I had no luck there, either. The streaming player simply says "not available in your area."
Kind of reminds me of that old mythology of the fencing of the West, and also of the idea that the Internet would unleash this marvelous new age where you would have free and open access any time, particularly in this land of the free.
Now, I'm thinking I'll probably have to find and use the same kind of software tools and dodges that so many Chinese have to use in order to breach their own firewall and get news from the outside world.
I mean, even the Academy Awards gets better live treatment than this? Is the USA actually the only developed country in the world unable to see the opening ceremony live?
Anyway, to put things in perspective -- missing the opening ceremony is not an earthshaking problem. It's irritating, but small potatoes compared to the real problems in this world. And I can just go back to sleep, then have a normal day and watch it tonight.
But it just seems to me indicative of something that it's censored in the United States, not because of some dictatorial mandate or communist firewall, but because corporate convenience dictates that we get access at their convenience, and that in this case, TV is not serving the viewer with content so much as it's serving the corporation with consumer's eyeballs. And how many eyeballs are they going to get at 5 am compared with evening broadcast times?
Okay, I'm going back to bed now.