I say Turin, you say Torino
I can be an Olympics geek when need be, and so it is that I've done a decent job trying to follow the Winter Games (despite the lead-up columns to the Games that we had pretty much saying the Winter Olympics suck -- great, we're not even waiting to be snarky).

If anything, I get my quadrennial interest in curling revived. It helps that there's usually a match on one of the NBCU networks at 3 a.m. when I'm getting home from work and/or trying to get to bed. And for a bigger plus, the U.S. women's team, or at least the Johnson sisters, is a rather photogenic bunch; however, the early returns are rather disappointing, and we really can't give them medals for just being cute. That could explain some of the saturation coverage, albeit during off-hours. With that said, it's fun picking it up again, and like Cooch mentioned, we pretend to be at least reasonably informed viewers rather quickly. I think part of it has to do with the announcers, and part of it comes with having an open mind (and not quickly mocking it).

As for the rest of the Games, I'm getting ready for "real" hockey to begin, although the U.S. women did have a scare against Finland, trailing 3-2 going into the third before winning 7-3. At least now, most of the games blanketing the coverage on the non-network arms will seem meaningful, as opposed to any women's game featuring non-North American teams.

All the cool speed events like luge, speed skating, skiing, etc., lose a bit of its magic in NBC's tape-delay format, mainly because any competition where you're competing against the clock, you have to edit out some of the spontaneity that comes from hoping if an early competitor's time can hold up. Unfortunately, I have to manufacture my own "live" drama by refreshing the results page on the Web. (NBC sorta tried that years ago with the Triplecast, which was a flop for the most part, by my brother enjoyed watching tapes of some of those events since you got to see everybody.)

What is intriguing to me with the ratings for the Games (naturally, down from Salt Lake City) is figuring out what the public's TV-viewing patterns are these days, and how to appeal to each of these different demographics:
-- First off, you've got sports fans like me who want to watch things live, and so the packaged stuff and tape-delayed drama does nothing for me, especially if I already know what happened.
However, the numbers of fans who watch "mainstream" sports who are also interested in the Olympics seem to be waning. If some of the pre-Games stuff that was written is an indication of the sports-viewing audience today, it's not even worth "expanding our horizons" to watch luge, speedskating, etc. (Maybe it's more magnified during the winter since there is more of a disconnect between sports and reality. We've all run a race or taken a swim in the pool. Not as many of us have ridden a bobsled.)
-- The extended coverage of curling and hockey might be showing that there is a market for The Ocho or Obscure Sports Quarterly. And with those two sports, it's much harder to show the event without showing a full game. Highlights work, to an extent, but it's not like other speed events where you can show a gold-medal run rather quickly.
-- Figure skating, for the most part, draws in a crowd that's not sports fans. But since it has the potential to draw the most ratings (mostly because of the often mutual exclusivity between sports fans and Olympics fans), that's where the bulk of the value of the Games comes from. So it's interesting that while Michelle Kwan's withdrawal does put a damper on things, there hasn't been as much hype over Sasha Cohen (especially if that picture is any indication, and even Shaun White mentioned he really wanted to meet her after he won his gold). Are we to think that just the thrill of the competition is enough to draw people in those extra viewers, or have they just given up on getting the male demographic (who's probably watching 24 anyways)?