NBC lambasted over banal butchering of opening ceremony – and rightly so

As the Olympic torch was lit in London at the end of a three-and-a-half-hour ceremony live blogged and tweeted across the globe, NBC finally began to broadcast the show – to Americans on the east coast (west coast viewers had to wait another three hours for their turn).

Commentators Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira reunited for the cameras as if it was Beijing 2008 – or the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, or just a regular morning in 2011.

Theirs was the job of interpreting, explaining and trampling all over Danny Boyle's fast-paced, high-def presentation of Great Britain from the time of maypoles and hay bales to the current day. And they did what they were paid to do.

In the early part of the broadcast, commentary was restrained. Matt and Meredith didn't speak over every song, and they only interrupted each other every so often.

Much of the early local cultural references may have been lost on a US audience, and to their credit the cheery duo did a valiant job trying to explain the Beefeaters, the Industrial Revolution, and the National Health Service.

"Some very big surprises lie ahead," said Matt cutting to a commercial break as reports of the show from those who had watched it live began to flood the internet.

He was referring to the "entry" of Her Majesty the Queen into the Olympic Stadium. Matt was beside himself at the prospect of it. He was DYING to tell us what would happen.

Luckily for us the set up for the Queen's entrance was a video of Daniel Craig as James Bond escorting her into a helicopter.

In a rare display of self-control NBC let the pre-shot video sections of the ceremony play without interruption. As Matt Lauer would say, "We thank them for that."

Meredith disappeared two hours into the show and Matt was joined by Parade of Nations veteran Bob Costas for the marathon task of introducing the individual nations to America.

The two men lobbed their factoids of "Olympic trivia" as they called them back and forth with fluent ease.

A couple of examples from Matt, who edged out Bob for the gold medal in triviality: "From the I-did-not-know-that-file, Denmark is the most competitive non-Asian country in Badminton."

And, "Madagascar – for our younger viewers a country associated with a few animated movies."

At this point of the broadcast a Storify called Shut Up Matt Lauer began to circulate on Twitter.

The most egregious moment of commentary had come earlier when Matt and Meredith mentioned that there was to be a tribute to "someone" called Tim Berners-Lee.

"If you haven't heard of him, we haven't either," chuckled Meredith about the inventor of the world wide web sitting on stage.

"Google him," laughed Matt with no apparent sense of irony.

Three and half hours into the broadcast the United States team appeared in the Parade of Nations and promptly took out their cellphones, snapping pictures and shooting videos of each other as they walked through the stadium.

It was an odd moment that somehow synthesized the lack of spontaneity of the whole television experience.

Ten minutes later the home team of Brits finally entered to David Bowie's Heroes, a blizzard of white confetti, and an overwhelming roar of gusty cheering.

"Let's sit back and listen," said Bob. And we did – for 20 seconds before Matt started up again.

"Seven billion pieces of paper have just been released into the air over
this Olympic Stadium …"

By now the two men just couldn't stop. They talked all the way through The Arctic Monkeys singing Come Together. They talked through the stadium announcers.

They briefly held back for Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Olympic Committee, and for the Queen, who declared the Games officially open.

But the minute the Olympic flag appeared at the end of her words they started up again. And from then on they didn't stop talking till the fireworks at the end. If only NBC had cut some of their banality.

But the network chose to let them run on in their entirety.

Other portions of the ceremony weren't so lucky. The Sex Pistol's Pretty Vacant was largely missing from NBC's coverage, other than the briefest of snippets either side of yet another commercial break.

Meanwhile the arrival of Saudi Arabia's first female athletes never made it onto American television nor did a memorial package displayed in the stadium on big screens.

Instead, as a taste of what we can expect in the days and weeks to come, NBC interrupted exciting and emotional television for a static Ryan Seacrest studio interview with Michael Phelps.

By the end of the night three and a half hours of live action had become four and a half hours of tedium and #nbcfail was trending on Twitter. It was an award rightly earned.