From last night—
- Reaching into the refrigerator magnet word salad, it’s Freestyle Skiing - Men’s Halfpipe. All the temperature changes in Pyeongchang are screwing up the snow in the pipe (uh, dude…EXTREME?) A great quote—“So the man from Reno on his third and final run rolls the dice and it comes up Yahtzee!”
- If you’ve been watching QISE much at all, you’ve probably seen these micro-ads, mostly from Toyota, that run maybe 10 seconds between ski/board runs. Kabletown is squeezing in as many ads as they can, even with a live event going on.
- For some reason, Natalie Morales was doing interviews at the bottom of Men’s Slalom. Was there some contractual issue going on? She seems a strange choice.
- Chloe Kim was flown halfway around the world to New York—just so she could be on the 5 minute micro-Fallon show.
- Tara and Johnny dropped by to chat with Tirico—Johnny is wearing a Seinfeld-esque puffy shirt and a bird in his hair. BTW—they announced they are hosting the closing ceremonies.
- The Peacock stretched out “prime plus" and got the Women’s Hockey Gold win for US live—38 years after the “Miracle on Ice".
Onto today—
- Of course, the Today Show began with the US Women’s Hockey team, followed by Lindsey and Mikaela, then the US medal winners of Men's Halfpipe, the Women’s Bobsled, and the Women’s Cross-Country Team Pursuit, respectively, and finally Jamie Anderson. The Today Show has been waiting for a day like this. The US leapfrogged to fourth place in medals overall since yesterday.
- Rebecca Lowe begins afternoon coverage hanging out at the top of the ski jump—clearly terrified at the height involved. She quickly throws it to Curling.
- Primetime begins with an intro to the marquis Winter QISE event—Ladies’ Figure Skating. We’ll see when it will start on the main broadcast (it’s already on streaming, showing the lower-ranked competitors). Tirico, in the Fortress, tosses it to Tara and Johnny, the latter wearing what appears to be a formal tablecloth.
- Then it’s off to the final night of Short Track. I’ll say it again—why isn't there a pro league in the US? I mean something like Monday Night Short Track. It’s a shame we won’t see this for another four years.
- Also, what’s with the “Ironside” theme as background music at the event?
- To tease the audience, we get a package on Evgenia Medvedeva, the Russ—sorry, "Olympic Athlete from Russia" figure skater. It’s all about her interest in anime.
- We finally got to figure skating 90 minutes into Primetime. Based on what’s on the live stream right now, the Peacock mothership is picking out earlier performances to show. The Americans, and the leaders, will come up later.
More to come.