 Highlights and Lowlights
- Burn, baby, burn....well, this was completely unexpected. For those of you who don't know, Team Rockwood is based in Oklahoma, which hasn't had rain in over a month-and-a-half. Well, some jerk thought it would be a good idea to start a brush fire near the Oklahoma City metro area, and he ended up setting miles of countryside on fire. Needless to say, the local news was all over this, and because of that, today's Olympic Watch will be a little skewed. Originally I was just going to give NBC the benefit of the doubt and assume that all of the interrupted broadcast was "event" material, but I decided later that it would be better just to give the fire its own little category. Anyway, on with the show.
- NBC did the equestrian events right on Tuesday by... gasp!... actually showing the event! It was a short segment, admittedly, but I don't have a problem with that as long as they show me the actual competition.
- The fire story blanked out the first 30 minutes of the Olympic coverage, but after an hour-and-a-half, I was almost giddy. NBC had shown both the equestrian events and more swimming (which, if you've read the previous days comments, you already know I love), and only had three minutes of fluff! Was someone at NBC reading this page?
- Then everything fell apart. The next 27 minutes of coverage had eleven minutes of fluff, over 40 percent of that time. And worst of all, it featured...
- "GM Presents Olympic Moments, hosted by Jimmy Roberts." Tonight Jimmy poured the sap on for Equitorial Guinea's swimmer/opening-ceremony-flag-carrier Eric Musembani. Jimmy praised Mr. Musembani for demonstrating the true Olympic spirit, that the glory lies not in winning, but in the competition itself. Does anyone at NBC know the definition of irony? How odd that they're willing to spend five-and-a-half minutes glorifying an actual competition that they would never, ever, EVER show. GM, I spent this 330 seconds thinking how nice it would be to own a Honda.
- Two minutes on Keri Strug. Well, at least that's only four-year-old news. But still, this plus another puff piece on the Romanian women added up to another five-and-a-half minutes of NBC's coverage that they could have been showing actual gymnastics instead of a crowd of Romanians that looked an awful lot like the torch-carrying mob from "Young Frankenstein."
- A seven minute segment on Marion Jones. Is she competing tonight? Noooooo. Don't you think that NBC could at least put her story on her night so that we can watch others compete?
- I'm noticing a disturbing trend in NBC's fluff. On more than one occasion, their fluff piece has immediately preceded the featured athlete winning a gold medal. I realize that these stories are usually on the favorites, but knowing that everything in the telecast is pre-recorded, is NBC purposely stacking the deck? Do they have stories prepared for everyone and they only run the one on the eventual winner? I'm keeping my eye out on this one and hoping that so far it's just a coincidence.
- Once again, I'll finish by giving credit where credit is due. NBC closed out the last hour of their broadcast with only a minute-and-a-half of fluff and 35 minutes of events (10 minutes went to more fire coverage). Someone with a focus group should find out what people thought of that last hour. I'm betting I already know the answer.
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