All my gripes about Olympic TV coverage

… were proven correct on the last day. Phil Mushnick puts it best at NYPOST.com. An excerpt:

Many of us sat down for Sunday dinner after that fabulous game, almost like the Nelsons, the Cleavers, the Waltons, the Huxtables, the Munsters.

When’s the last time you could say that about a World Series game or an NBA final? The CBS-leased NCAA basketball championship now tips at 9:22 on a Monday night. Baseball’s Opening Day, sold at auction to ESPN, is now at night, this year’s first pitch after 8 p.m. in Boston — on April 4.

If NBC, or any commercial network, yesterday had been able to shuffle and deal, Canada-USA would have begun at about 9 p.m. ET to maximize coast-to-coast primetime ad revenues.

And NBC would have much preferred that we watched the game alone — more TV sets tuned in, that way — certainly not in groups.

In other words, NBC (and CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox) would have preferred that we watched from the same place we now watch most games of national interest: that same chair or from bed, lights out, pillows up.

I watched with friends in a crowded bar where people cheered (for Canada, too). It’s a whole different and vastly better experience to share moments like these. (Ten of us watched the Super Bowl together at Jill’s. Same phenomenon — a wonderful shared experience.)