Chris had a lament on HK's woeful TV last week. You might also be aware that the Olympics are currently on, an event that occurs once every 4 years. It's darn popular and most people like to watch it. In many countries the coverage is 24/7 for the duration, giving such sports as syncronised diving their one shot at mockery before they sink back into oblivion for 4 more years.

Not in Hong Kong. In the free-to-air duopoloy, both channels TVB and ATV share the rights (that is so Hong Kong). Their idea of coverage? Take TVB: one hour of highlights between 8:38pm and 9:21pm (by the VCR clock) with three hosts who are able to say not much at all while the studio waits for the next central feed to come in. Otherwise there's the 8-9am highlights, the vital 1:30pm-4pm bit and the handy 6:20pm-7:20pm session. All perfectly good times for anyone who isn't working for a living. The evening broadcasts sign off the same way: join us at midnight for live coverage right through to 5am. Now I know that Hong Kong is a city that stays up late and primetime only really starts after 9pm. But is it so much to ask TVB to refrain from showing old movies and documentaries for a couple of weeks and instead actually show Olympics coverage for a few hours when normal people are awake? I don't even mind the China-centric coverage, given the Olympics is all about faux-patriotism and ersatz-nationalism.

In desperation I went searching through i-Cable. I found 5 channels showing soccer. Not one showing Olympics. Is it so much to ask, just for a couple of weeks, to see these games instead of repeats of obscure European soccer games? A friend in Singapore told me he spent a fruitless Saturday night going from bar to bar trying to find one that would switch from Premier League to the Olympics for 10 minutes so he could watch Thorpe's swimming race. There wasn't even a soccer game on at the time; they were between matches. Every single bar said no. Not one exception.

What the hell is wrong with people here?