 Highlights and Lowlights
- Saturday night was kind of a good news/bad news situation for NBC's Olympic coverage. The good news was that once again they broke the three hour mark for showing events. The bad news is the fluff time also went up. How could both go up? Well, NBC ran ten minutes over their allotted time. Technically I think that's breaking the rules, but I can hardly complain about more event coverage. Plus, tonight we got our first bona fide case of jingoism! On with the show...
- NBC led off with some fluff about the two Australian swimmers in the Men's 1,500m Freestyle, then proceded to edit the race itself to make it shorter. Granted, watching a swimming race for fifteen minutes isn't particularly exciting, especially since the two Aussies grabbed their leads early and held them for the entire race. However, they spent nearly 12 minutes on the 15 minute race, and three minutes on the fluff. Why not do a picture-in-picture with the interview in the background and the race in the box? Oh, that's right... because NBC thinks soccer moms don't want to see competitions. Their low ratings sure bear that out, don't they?
- Harry Smith educates us for ten minutes on yet another subject that has nothing to do with the Olympics. Australians, according to Smith, are defined by Gallipoli, and we got ten minutes of background information on it. While the history lesson was indeed educational, in the time it took up, we could have watched Maurice Greene run the 100m 60 times. Also, as somber as this piece was, I found it ironic that NBC chose to follow it immediately with a promo of Aaron Spelling's latest sleazy soap "Titans." How's that for respectful?
- A couple of days ago I praised Phil Liggett and his crew for their excellent work on the track cycling events. Sadly, I have to withhold praise for them on the mountain biking. Although the segment finished well, it opened with several minutes of unnecessary fluff, and the whole piece was edited so erratically that I was never sure who was in the lead until the very end. Hopefully they'll turn it around when they cover the men tomorrow.
- Harry Smith shows up again at the beginning of the second hour, this time talking in soft focus about Steve Redgrave, a four-time British rowing medalist. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Smith is great on "Biography," but he should stay out of sportscasting.
- Synchronized diving is fairly interesting as an event, but the announcer needs to stop trying to guess, only seconds before we discover the answer, what the actual scores will be. About half of the time she was wrong, and I could have guessed wrong half the time. If you're not going to contribute anything worthwhile, keep your mouth shut.
- "Citius, Altius, Fortius presented by AT&T" tonight featured a two-minute segment on Jesse Owens. Finally, a history lesson on an Olympian not from the last 25 years. Of course, it still doesn't have anything to do with this Olympics now, does it? Fluff!
- Here I was, all set to give the swimming coverage a perfect "10.0" for the Olympics and they go and screw up on the last day. The events themselves went fine, but the interviews and comments afterwards were very unprofessional. After Jim Gray managed to keep his foot out of his mouth for the entire week, they replaced him with Andrea Joyce, who proceded to challenge Women's 50m Freestyle winner Inge de Bruijn about whether she had taken performance-enhancing drugs to get better. In full attack-dog mode, Joyce reiterated the question several times, not only to de Bruijn, but also to American Amy Van Dyken, whose off-handed comment after losing Friday's semifinal had started the whole fray. While all the competitors (including Van Dyken) blew off the question, Joyce persisted. To further the damage, Bob Costas got in on the act, saying that although de Bruijn had passed the Olympic drug tests, there is currently no test for human growth hormone, virtually implying that that was de Bruijn's drug of choice. It was a sad display of jingoism in what had been NBC's best event coverage so far.
- Hey everybody! Sprinters Ato Bolden and Maurice Greene are friends! Group hug!! Two minutes of fluff. By the way, Maurice Greene could have run the 100m 12 times in the time it took to run this story.
- And thank goodness that Cathy Freeman got a minute-and-a-half of fluff on her life story. You know, between lighting the torch, getting 90 seconds of fluff yesterday, and being the favorite in the women's 400m, this poor woman just isn't getting any publicity.
- "GM presents Olympic Moments." Tonight GM brought to us, in a story where I spent 270 seconds thinking about buying a Kia, a story praising the "Star Spangled Banner," the national anthem that makes everyone cry. Or so Jimmy Roberts would have us believe. To prove his point, he showed American athlete after American athlete bursting into tears at the very sound of "O say can you see." Why, certainly there's something very magical and special about only the "Star Spangled Banner!" I never see athletes from other countries getting emotional after they hear their anthem when they win. (Of course, part of the reason for that is NBC doesn't show us the events where other countries win.) In a week full of worthless GM Moments, this was the worst GM Moment yet. Odd how I'm beginning to think of "GM" as synonymous with "bad." I'll bet that's not the reaction they're hoping for.
- Although I'm still only counting minutes during NBC's prime time coverage, I actually spent a lot of Saturday afternoon flipping back and forth between CNBC's boxing coverage and NBC's beach volleyball. I watched for three hours and didn't see one bit of fluff. I was giddy.
- Speaking of Olympic boxing, commentators Marv Albert and Teddy Atlas make a great team. Marv is a great announcer, and Teddy really knows his stuff. And in what might be the best TV so far of the Olympics, Teddy demonstrates good boxing technique on Marv! He never actually makes contact, but Marv visibly flinching every time Teddy makes a jabbing motion is remarkably fun to watch. You just know that at any time he's going to let loose and sock him in the nose. NBC should be running this on prime time.
- We're halfway now, and other than my lack of sleep, everything appears to be going pretty well. If you have a minute, tell a friend you like this site, and if you have a few more minutes, check out Rockwood. It's free, after all, and if you've enjoyed this, I think you'll get a kick out of everything else, too. See you tomorrow!
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