When the months-long family drama for control of Viacom was made official in an oddly-timed press release Saturday night, one voice was missing: The man at the center of the dispute, Sumner Redstone.
The surest bet during any Olympics is not that Usain Bolt will win the 100 meters; it is that NBC will be trashed, loudly, in many quarters, for the quality of its coverage.
If there is a silver lining for writers and editors at Gawker Media's flagship site, which will cease operations next week, it's that, for now, they still have jobs.
The Rio Olympics, and NBC's coverage of them, have been neither the utter disaster that many feared, nor completely flawless. But until conditions force the network to reconsider its formula, there's little incentive to change its routine.