If you live on the east coast of the US, this year you’ve seen your share of snow. With record snowfalls across the Northeast and Mid Atlantic regions, cities are blanketed, roads are skating rinks, and grocery stores are pre-winter-storm war zones. I heard somewhere that just the first blizzard to hit D.C. this winter put the metro area 20 inches over its average.

If you live in Vancouver this year, you might be jealous. Not because you love snow so much. No, I’m sure the Canucks in Vancouver have seen enough snow to satisfy them for a lifetime. But it just so happens that the Winter Olympic Games kick off this weekend in Vancouver, and snowfall there is verging on record lows. Reports are stating that many of the events at lower altitudes, like many of the snowboard and half-pipe events, could have to deal with particularly adverse conditions if snowfall doesn’t pick up in the next couple of weeks.

At some point in this ubiquitously interconnected world—whether you like it or not—you have to come to terms with the fact that perception is reality. Or so it seems, at least. It’s the manicured sizzle on a plastic steak. It’s the punditry, not the point.

If you believe what you’ve heard about the Winter Olympics so far this year (at least in the U.S.), it’s a wonder they’re even going to go through with them. Sports commentators in virtually every medium have been chiming in with their talking points and criticisms.

The brush of negative press started with an unlikely source. NBC, the network with an exclusive contract to broadcast the Summer and Winter Olympics, announced that it will likely lose money on its coverage of the Vancouver games. An avalanche of negative press about the Winter Olympics followed. Now the snow shortage in the host city is just throwing salt in the wound.

You can be made to believe a lot of things. NBC would have you believe that ‘the diffusion of audiences’ with all of the specialized entertainment options available has led to decreased interest in audiences and advertisers in such a broad sports outlet, catering to what they would call ‘a niche market’ of viewers.

I don’t buy it. The Super Bowl blew the ‘diffusion of audiences’ argument out of the water this year with the largest audience in television history (though admittedly, ad revenues did slump a bit), and all of the same entertainment options were available at that time slot.

Really? Is it possible? The Olympics were once a staple of American television every four years, with ratings that rivaled the championships of major sports. So could it really be that this household institution had devolved into a net loss for its broadcasters?

For me, this is a tough pill to swallow. I love the Winter Olympics. And if I had to pick between the summer and winter games it would be an easy pick for the winter. But remember, perception is reality. As soon as NBC announced that it would likely lose money on the games, it assured that it would. The same rules apply on Wall Street and Madison Ave. Now as we see, they also hold true at Rockefeller Center.

It’s no wonder to me that NBC stands to lose revenue on the Vancouver games. The network has tried to sell out the Olympics as a glorified figure skating competition with a few other events that they believe no one cares about inconspicuously listed somewhere in the fine print below the sequins and man makeup.

I’m not knocking figure skating. There’s no doubt that it is the big ratings draw of the winter games and probably always will be. But it just seems like NBC has considered it the only selling point of the games, and ignored everything else it has to offer.

The reason I enjoy the Winter Olympics more than the Summer is simple: it’s more exciting, and it’s more progressively relevant.

Let’s start with excitement. Be honest, how many times can you watch a runner lap around a track without changing the channel? How about a swimmer going back and forth in a pool? Or a crew team rowing a boat in a straight line down a river? For me the answer is three—as in it takes me three seconds to realize what I’m watching and find something interesting to watch.

You could argue that each of these summer events has a winter equivalent, and you would have a point. But I think that there are notable exceptions in the events that tend to be featured in the winter games. For instance, there is a long distance cross-country skiing event that might seem like the most boring event you could imagine, until you realize that at set points in the event, the athletes pick up guns and fire at targets. Time penalties are assessed according to accuracy. Why is it that guns just seem to make anything more interesting?

There is also an element of speed, danger, and adrenaline in the winter games that you just won’t find in the summer. Downhill skiers teeter on the very edge of control and achieve ridiculous speeds. There are events with names like “the skeleton” where very unintelligent human beings lay down face first on a bladed sled the size of a Radio Flyer and hurl themselves down a track that is a sheet of ice with 90 degree banked turns. There is an ever-present excitement of not knowing when the big crash will send a person flopping down the mountain like a rag doll, but knowing it’s coming soon.

As for relevance: there is no better juxtaposition of pure simple relevance than hockey in winter and baseball in summer. Whereas baseball was recently excluded from the summer games because everyone realized that the best players in the game weren’t even playing in the Olympics, the NHL shuts down mid-season for weeks so that its players can represent their countries. There is nothing more relevant than a grudge match between true professionals when national pride is on the line. With all due respect to the athletes, there is little less relevant than college stand-ins taking over an unpaid competition that their rich prima donna counterparts are to busy for, or are simply “contractually unable to compete. Hockey’s status in the Winter Olympics is good for the sport, the Olympics, and the NHL. And before you go there, the NBA is off-season during the Summer Olympics—it’s not the same.

Then there is progressive relevance. The Winter Olympics has not been afraid of change. They have not shied away from the youthful energy of the extreme sports world. Snowboarding, extreme skiing, and the half-pipe events have become some of the most popular at the winter games almost instantly. Suddenly the stars of the Winter Olympics are young, energetic, and cool. Not because the Olympic Committee planned it that way, but because the public couldn’t get enough of it. Shaun White went to Torino four years ago as a domestically popular X-Games star to a narrow market. He left Torino an international superstar, a household name, and the new face of the US Olympic Team.

But perhaps the sad truth in all of this is that NBC has failed to recognize any of it. It has failed to take what it learned in Torino and run with it. It has certainly failed to capitalize on its potential. Worst of all, it has stopped even trying to sell it. When was the last time you saw a promo for the Winter Olympics? It seems like they’ve stopped even trying.

For the network ranked dead-last among the four majors, NBC obviously has its work cut out for it. I dare say it begs the question: if the Winter Olympics has found a way to become progressively relevant, and you can’t find a way to sell it, what does that say about how relevant you are? Anyway I’ll be watching, even if perception is reality.

Related posts:

1. Summer in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada