I have been watching the Olympics on my Media Center PC, but got an Xbox 360 yesterday so now I am watching on my TV rather than my PC.  I am basically recording every show with the word “Olympic” in the title, which comes out to be something like 20 hours/day.  Lest you think I am a couch potato (well, OK, maybe I am), I am scanning through most of the Olympic coverage late at night after my kids go to sleep - 2 hour curling matches watched in 15 minutes, 60 minutes of ski jumping down to 10 minutes, but ice skating is hard to compress.  And I would have never watched curling without the ability to skip through it easily.

The networks have to be really concerned about how to pay for programming in the future, as most DVR’ers have basically eliminated all commercial watching.  NBC has paid the IOC $613 million for the right to broadcast the 2006 Winter Olympics, $820 for the 2010 games, and $1.18 billion for the 2012 summer games.  Production expenses for these games are estimated to exceed $100 million.  The LA Times estimated that NBC is shelling out over $58 million each day to cover these games.  And yet, the February 14 ratings got trounced by American Idol, which must cost a hundred times less to produce.

How will the networks make money in the world where people can so easily skip over the commercials?  This must strike fear into their hearts.