Olympic coverage on the Bermuda Broadcasting Corporation appeared to be off to a rocky start yesterday afternoon.

However, BBC CEO Rick Richardson explained last night, the fault did not lay with ZFB ? in fact, the station was just trying to get the jump on the rest of North America by using a Caribbean feed to broadcast the Opening Ceremonies hours in advance of NBC.

And rumours that the local station blocked NBC yesterday in order to force viewers to watch on their channel are untrue, Mr. Richardson said.

Several viewers expressed their outrage to after the Opening Ceremonies were cut off yesterday afternoon by an episode of Sesame Street.

Viewers complained that the station began coverage of the Ceremonies two hours late, with no audio feed, and terrible picture quality. The Bermuda contingent was not even shown.

Georgia Marshall, a Bermudian of Greek descent, said she actually bought a TV and had it delivered to her office in order to watch the Opening Ceremonies at 2 p.m. yesterday.

?I am so appalled at the coverage,? she said last night. ?Is this crap going to go on for the next two weeks?

?We have athletes there and we want to see what they are doing. Where is our national pride??

However, Mr. Richardson explained, the station was in fact just trying to beat the pack by using a live feed offered to them by the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) ? an attempt which, he said, in hindsight, they should not have made.

NBC owns the rights to Olympic coverage in North America, and official coverage in the region was not set to begin until 9 p.m. Bermuda-time last night ? including coverage of the Opening Ceremonies.

?We attempted to do early live coverage through the CMC,? Mr. Richardson said. ?Even the NBC folks at Elbow Beach weren?t seeing live coverage.?

However the CMC experienced technical difficulties, Mr. Richardson said, and the BBC had to decide whether to run with all the feed, or only parts of it.

They elected parts of it, a choice he regretted. ?They had problems and it backfired.?

However NBC?s official coverage began in Bermuda last night at 9 p.m., he said, adding that the Bermuda Broadcasting Corporation were not blocking NBC.

In fact, they were also bringing Olympic coverage on other channels such as CNBC, MSNBC and Bravo!, he said. ?We have made more (coverage) available.?