Every four years, the voices of angry TV watchers can be heard cursing the quality of Olympic coverage in Bermuda.At one time, this was directed towards the apparent bias of US networks, which fed viewers two weeks of tub-thumping about the superiority of American athletes over all other nations. If an American was unlikely to medal in a particular event, that sport might as well have not existed.American viewers in Bermuda were unfazed by this, unsurprisingly. But Canadians, Britons, Jamaicans and others found it hard to stomach. Of course, watching Olympic broadcasts in other countries has revealed that every nation’s broadcaster tends to focus on that country’s athletes; that is what the bulk of the audience is interested in.Still, one can be assured of certain things in many countries, namely that the quality of the broadcast and the commentary will be relatively high, if you can filter out the jingoism.The ideal, then, would be to receive Olympic coverage from a national broadcaster with high production values and terrible athletes. That way, viewers could be assured of getting a wide spread of marquee events, regardless of who was competing, with a high quality broadcast as well.Perhaps that is asking too much. But it’s not asking too much to get a higher quality broadcast than the one Bermuda has just had to endure. For years, the Bermuda Broadcasting Company, which has carried many international sporting broadcasts previously, took more than its fair share of criticism, often for factors that were well out of its control, namely that Bermuda has to accept Caribbean regional broadcasts and also had to blackout other networks from the US and elsewhere.Now CableVision has come in for heavy criticism and has responded in the same vein; that it could only show the Caribbean broadcast since the omniscient Olympics authorities had determined that was the region where Bermuda belonged. But that was better than nothing. Still, there’s no excuse for failing to provide sound. What can be said is that the choices and quality did improve through the fortnight, although that was not hard given the horrors of the Opening Ceremony broadcast.So what’s the answer? Bermuda cannot stage its own broadcast, so that idea should be dispelled now. But Government and the Bermuda Olympic Association should approach the International Olympic Committee now to get Bermuda moved to another domicile or region where it can enjoy a broadcast of better quality from Rio de Janeiro than what it endured this year.It can plausibly be asked whether any of this really matters. There are more important things than sporting events, no matter how huge. The world is afflicted with poverty, hunger, war, a seemingly intractable economic crisis, climate change and so on. But those problems show why the Olympics does matter. They give people hope that the world can compete in peace, and they give individuals hope that they too can do better than those that came before and can achieve their dreams.To be sure, this newspaper is proud of its coverage of the Olympics, but also concedes that there is no substitute for seeing Usain Bolt actually breaking the tape live. In a relatively short time, most people will be able to watch the events of their choice streamed to their home computer (and yes, this already happens to some extent). In the meantime, the people of Bermuda surely have the right to enjoy TV coverage that is of the same calibre as that seen by Americans, Canadians and others.