There's No Pleasing Everyone

This much I've learned after a week of rather extensive Olympic viewing.
The CBC wants you to watch its Beijing Games coverage. It just doesn't appear to want — or expect — anyone with a semblance of a normal life (i.e. a day job) to take in very much of it.
Here's one example to illustrate that point. Stayed up until past 12:30 a.m. overnight to watch the finish of the women's gymnastics individual all-around final. Went to bed knowing who won gold (Nastia Liukin), silver (Shawn Johnson) and bronze (Yang Yilin), and exactly how they did it.
Yet here was the CBC just showing yet another repeat of that event (it also aired during Olympic Morning, from what I've been told). So you can see, it's pretty easy to narrow down your Games viewing time soon enough.
Now let it be said programming something as massive as a Summer Olympics is no walk in the park. Can't say I envy whoever has their hand on the big clicker over in China. Not that it does anything to ease the frustrations of someone who feels he or she isn't getting the full Games experience from Beijing.
Have to admit I can't see how CBC can avoid this sort of thing, though, when it has to service a vast country with five distinct time zones. That gymnastics repeat I saw tonight? Working folks in Vancouver were still on the drive home at that point. But for someone in St. John's, who couldn't stay up until 2 a.m. for the end of it all, this evening's presentation was a welcome sight.
The lesson here — and many in the broadcast game will tell you it's so — is that there's no pleasing everyone all of the time. You just do the best you can with the hand you've been dealt (in this case, a crazy time zone) and hope it leaves the majority of your audience satisified at the end of the day.
Besides, like we said earlier, people in this country love to bitch about television. They're Canadians and they just wouldn't have it any other way.