 Highlights and Lowlights
- WOW! Way to go NBC! Sunday night's presentation had a remarkably low 18 minutes of fluff, live news in the middle of the broadcast, and events galore! I don't know who finally woke up at the programming department, but they should get a medal. Let's get started...
- The biggest downside to broadcasting the games from Sydney is the massive time difference. I'm not going to debate whether or not NBC should have requested event time changes to be able to broadcast live to the American audience (fight amongst yourselves), but given that they decided not to, they're finally figuring out how to do it correctly. Sunday night's beach volleyball was a good example. NBC dropped us into the middle of a match "already in progress" and proceded to show us the most exciting portion of the game. I'm sure purists would have liked to see the whole game (as I would have), but at least we can be happy they showed the match "as is" instead of giving us the rock-video highlights we got in weightlifting and judo. Here, only 30 minutes into the show, it was clear something was different.
- After a two-minute fluff intro into men's gymnastics, we got another two-and-a-half minutes of men's gymnastics fluff thanks to the "Citius, Altius, Fortius by AT&T" segment, narrated once again by Harry Smith. I may not get to see any events, but at least I get to hear Harry's melodious voice. Not much of a tradeoff. Ironically, even with my notes, I can't remember a thing Harry talked about. However, in that same half-hour, gymnast Igors Vihrovs, the lone Latvian gymnast in the Olympics performed a nearly flawless floor routine. The twenty seconds we spent waiting for his score, and the joy on his face when he won, provided more drama, tension, and excitement than all of Harry Smith's prescripted segments combined. How many more moments like these have we missed while listening to Harry Smith, or even worse...
- "GM presents Olympic Moments, with Jimmy Roberts." Jimmy is on the fast track for a career at "Inside Edition." With another cloying report on something hardly related to the Olympics, today I spent 330 seconds shopping for Lincolns while Jimmy told us about John Glenn and the city of Perth. That's all the time I'm going to spend on this. If you want to know more, you can wait for the Rockwood 2000 History Watch, which is where something like this would belong. I hope GM thinks they're getting their money's worth, because I hate them more each day.
- As would be expected, I suppose, of someone who watches five hours of Olympic coverage a night, I'm getting awfully sick of NBC's new-show promos. I've already mentioned I'm sick of "Ed," well now "Deadline" is getting on my nerves, too. "Oliver Platt is righting the wrongs! Straightening the curves! Flattening the hills!" I don't know if I can take it much longer.
- Another thing I haven't yet commented on is NBC's "log on now" graphics. Generally they don't interrupt with the events being covered, so they haven't bothered me that much. But when I think about it, it seems like online would be a much better forum for people to learn all about their favorite athletes than the schmaltzy fluff pieces they force on all the viewers. This is something they should think about before the next Olympics. Because by then we'll all have fully interactive TVs in our living rooms (along with flying cars in our garages and robot maids cleaning our houses).
- During the track and field events, one of the announcers said offhandedly that "as far as the world's media is concerned, there is only one Australian athlete: Cathy Freeman." This, of course, is part of the problem. There are many more athletes, not just from Australia, but from many other countries as well, that we never see because we have to spend all of our time watching stories about how tough life is for Chinese gymnasts.
- The "Sun America Sports Desk" today got live breaking news! While the substance behind it is questionable, the fact remains that NBC didn't try to put it off until tomorrow night. It seems Marion Jones' husband, C.J. Hunter might have tested positive for a banned drug in a competition he was in back in July. Now, since he's not actually in the Olympics, I don't know if this really counts as relevant or not, but like I said, at least it was live.
- The high jumping competition, like the beach volleyball, was another good application of a taped event being shown. NBC edited out all of the waiting between jumps, but still showed us the jumps themselves. I would have liked to have seen more, but if the goal is to get as many taped events on as possible during the broadcast, I think this is a good way to go.
- Svetlana Khorkina, the ostrich-like Russian gymnast who finally won her much-predicted gold medal, was shown getting misty-eyed during the playing of the Russian national anthem. If you believed everything Jimmy Roberts says, then you'd think that this only happens to Americans.
- Marilyn Knight, mother to U.S. hurdler James Carter, was shown in the stands cheering for her son. Ms. Knight was able to make the trip to Sydney because her coworkers secretly collected the money necessary to get her there, then surprised her with it. Four days ago, this would have been a four-minute fluff story complete with violin music and narration by Harry Smith. Today it was a simple voiceover by the track announcers. It meant no less to me, and I even appreciated the fact that NBC didn't waste four more minutes of my life.
- Overall, I was very pleased with Sunday night's show. The fluff was kept to a minimum, especially when you consider that fully one third of it was contained within GM's appalling "Olympic Moments" segment. If someone could just convince The General that people would rather see events sponsored by giant auto companies, I think we'd be in business. Twelve minutes of fluff in a five hour show would be easily tolerable, but eighteen is still pretty good. With over three hours of coverage on three of the last four nights, I'm actually looking forward to watching the rest of the week. Here's hoping.
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