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Vancouver Games – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

It was good news that in the last half century of televised Olympics NBC’s coverage of the Vancouver 2010 Opening Ceremony was the most watched ever for a non-U.S. Winter Olympics, with 67.5 million total viewers, 17 million more than in Turin in 2006.

The Opening Ceremony on NBC averaged 32.6 million viewers, most for a non-U.S. Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony in 16 years. NBC’s parent company GE has said NBC Universal will loose $250 million on the Vancouver Games.

Meanwhile in Canada two thirds of all Canadians watched the Opening Ceremony Friday.

It may be bad that the Vancouver Games are being plagued with unseasonably warm weather, but VANOC says it designed a schedule anticipating postponement of outdoor events.

Renee Smith Valade, VP Communications for VANOC said at a press conference Saturday, “so you can see that by postponing the events we’ve announced so far we do have room in the schedule to re-schedule. That was very deliberate. For any of the outdoor events for warm weather implications we do have usually two or three contingency days both for training and for competition. Generally we’re able to re-schedule the event within one or two days from when it was scheduled, whether it was competition or training”.

It was ugly to hear that more than 200 masked Olympic protesters splattered red paint and smashed windows on a downtown department store in Vancouver on Saturday. Damage to the store was estimated at about $10,000.

Police say the group marched through the upscale shopping district, vandalizing cars and stores. According to witnesses the protesters threw metal newspaper boxes into the display windows of the Hudson’s Bay Company where Olympic souvenirs are sold.

Police wearing riot gear quickly moved in and quashed the protest. Vancouver’s Police Chief Jim Chu said seven protesters were arrested on a variety of charges.

The protest was organized by the Olympic Resistance Network to “disturb business as usual”, reports AP. The network is an umbrella group for dozens of causes surrounding the Games, ranging from environmental concerns to economic issues.

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