2008 Summer Arts Preview

Airs on NBC Beginning Aug. 8

The Olympics are the quintessential sports event for people who love sports in general, or who don't like any sport in particular. It's a buffet, a little rhythmic gymnastics here, a little hammer throw there. You get all the excitement of competition without the time commitment of following an entire season. And there are even more non-sports reasons to watch this year: it is, or is meant to be, the reintroduction/coming-out of rising power China, with the possibility of protests over the country's human-rights record threatening to make actual news. For those just interested in the games, NBC Universal plans to air 3,600 hours of coverage (if my math is right, that's close to 10 times the actual number of hours in the sixteen days of the Olympiad). That includes 2,200 hours of live streaming video online, for those tired of avoiding spoilers while waiting to see tape-delayed events in primetime. The sports event of the summer, whether you're interested in Tibet or triathletes.