How To Watch The Olympics
The Olympics have, technically, already kicked off (including the US Women's National Soccer Team's victory over New Zealand), but things start in earnest with Friday's Opening Ceremony (airing at 7:30 pm ET on NBC).
Here's how to watch as many events as humanly possible over the next couple weeks.
Where To Watch (If You Have Cable)
The Games will be airing on the NBC family of networks, which means if you've got a TV and an antenna, you can at least watch the daily broadcasts on NBC — which there's actually quite a lot of.
The rest of the coverage will be spread around NBCSN, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, the Golf Channel, Telemundo and Bravo. Also, NBC is basically creating two new channels specifically for the basketball and soccer competitions, which should be available on the following cable packages:
Dish Network, DirecTV, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon, Cox, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Suddenlink, Mediacom
You can see the full TV schedule here. Google also breaks down the TV schedule every day here.
Streaming Options
With so many (so many!) events, streaming is your best bet for staying on top of everything — provided you have a participating cable subscription.1
If you do, you can watch pretty much everything at NBCOlympics.com, or on the NBC Sports app (available for iOS and Apple TV, Android/Chromecast, Windows Phone, Roku, Amazon Fire TV).
There are alternate options out there for cord-cutters. With Playstation Vue's basic access package, you'll get NBC, NBCSN, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, Telemundo and USA. Which means you'll miss out on the Golf Channel and the dedicated basketball and soccer channels, but get everything else. If golf is important to you, Vue's second tier will get you the Golf Channel
Sling TV's cheapest package won't help you out with the Olympics, but their $25 "Blue" package will get you NBC, NBCSN, USA and Bravo. The Golf Channel add-on will run you an extra $5, as will the CNBC/MSNBC add-on. Sorry, Telemundo fans.
Schedule
There are too dang many events to list them all here, but our favorite schedule is probably Google's, which breaks everything down by day and by sport (and tells you which sports are currently in action), as well as by what's on TV.
That said, here are days and times for the finals of some of the most popular events:
Monday, August 8
Gymnastics: Men's Team All-Around — 3:00 pm ET
Tuesday, August 9
Gymnastics: Women's Team All-Around — 3:00 pm ET
Swimming: Women's 200m Individual Medley — 10:29 pm ET
Wednesday, August 10
Gymnastics: Men's Individual All-Around — 3:00 pm ET
Thursday, August 11
Gymnastics: Women's Individual All-Around — 3:00 pm ET
Swimming: Men's 200m Individual Medley — 10:01 pm ET
Saturday, August 13
Track and Field: Women's 100m Finals — 9:35 pm ET
Swimming: Men and Women's 4×100 Medley Relay Finals — 9:49 pm ET
Sunday, August 14
Track and Field: Men's 100m Finals — 9:25 pm ET
Wednesday, August 17
Beach Volleyball: Men's Finals — 11:00 pm ET
Thursday, August 18
Beach Volleyball: Women's Finals — 11:00 pm ET
Friday, August 19
Track and Field: Women's and Men's 4×100 Relay Finals — 9:15/9:35 pm ET
Saturday, August 20
Track and Field: Women's and Men's 4×400 Relay Finals — 9:00/9:35 pm ET
Sunday, August 21
Basketball: Men's Basketball Finals — 2:45 pm ET