From Slashdot:

techmuse writes “Viewing the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony online at NBC’s Olympics website, you can see that the order in which the countries were presented was very different from the actual order of the countries in the ceremony, as listed at Wikipedia. NBC skipped roughly 100 countries ahead, then jumped back and forth, apparently delaying the appearance of the United States in its home market until later in the broadcast. (In fact, the US team was shown on the infield before they were shown marching!) NBC did not acknowledge this in its broadcast. Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?”

What? I can understand some creative editing, but this is ridiculous. I used to get pissed off at (usually commercial) channels hacking whole pieces off movies to fit the commercials, but this is just as bad for a “live” transmission.