 Highlights and Lowlights
- As we close in on the end of the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, NBC has another mediocre day as far as the events-to-fluff ratio goes, and a most interesting ratings fact presents itself to NBC chief Dick Ebersol. Let's start with that...
- NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol has been forced to defend himself and his network's questionable coverage of the Olympics for the past week-and-a-half, but the criticism grows louder every time someone reports NBC's actual ratings. When the peacock network was selling ad time, they promised their sponsors a 16.1 average rating throughout the games. Unfortunately for Ebersol, the Olympics have only managed to bring in a 14.7 rating on average. In fact, NBC achieved a rating of 16.1 only once, on last Sunday night's broadcast. In further proof that we here at The Rockwood 2000 Olympic Watch are completely correct in our theories (and you can look this up), it should be noted that Sunday night's broadcast featured not only the highest amount of events coverage in the entire Olympics, but also the least amount of fluff. NBC executives take note: Offer a seven-figure salary, a penthouse office, and a personal driver and we'll talk about who should really be running your sports department.
- Tuesday night's broadcast started out with a whimper as Al Trautwig, the announcer who had so mangled the women's triathlon it was darn near unwatchable, jumped with both feet onto the men's road cycling event. He attempted to turn a hard-charging bike race into some kind of treacly poetry. Please, if I wanted to hear treacly poetry, I'd head down to the local coffee shop on "open mic" night and hiss from the audience while Dick Ebersol brings me another cappuccino. Still, the race, when shown, was actually pretty exciting. But much like yesterday's coverage of the women's road race, the first half-hour was marked by having 15 minutes of racing to eight minutes of fluff.
- The second half-hour was even worse, not because there was more fluff, but because the decathlon coverage was all fluff. The first part was semi-watchable through all the jump cuts, only because Dan O'Brien was attempting to explain the rules. Apparently the decathlon scores very high on backlighting and dramatic music cues. But the second half of this over-five-minute was so incoherent that it was worthless.
- "GM presents Olympic Moments," with Jimmy Roberts. GM, today I only spent 300 seconds thinking about buying an Infinti. While that's much better than yesterday, it's still no good. Jimmy introduced us to U.S. taekwondo competitors Esther Kim and Kay Poe. During the qualifying tournament, Poe was hurt during competition, and Kim, in a show of amazing sportsmanship, voluntarily gave up her spot on the Olympic team so her friend Poe could go instead. IOC Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch was so impressed that he actually invited Kim to the Olympics as a spectator to reward her for her Olympic spirit. This is a great story. That's why it's so sad that Jimmy and GM ruined it. Instead of showing us Poe's match with Kim cheering her on, we got lots fluff of the two of them smiling and being happy together, and only about 10 seconds of the actual competition. Jimmy took a great story that needed no further embellishment, and choked it with so much goo that it...well, made it into just another forgettable GM Olympic Moment.
- NBC spent four minutes early on profiling Gabe Jennings, a 1,500-meter runner for the U.S. who is... uh... colorful, I guess you could say. Or crazy. Or a hippie. Either way, it just showed him acting goofy for four minutes, then followed it with his race, where he didn't qualify.
- The "Sun America Sports Desk" was a mixed bag today. On the one hand, they showed Venus Williams' tennis victory. However, they also showed a four-minute piece on the U.S. baseball team beating Cuba that was less news than fluff.
- Speaking of baseball, Tommy Lasorda had a great interview with Bob Costas near the end of the show. I'm still counting it as fluff, but it was clear that Tommy was thrilled to be in Sydney, and even more thrilled to win the gold for the U.S. Plus, Costas can do a baseball interview like almost no one else. I'll admit that I liked it, even if it was fluff.
- Finally, in the last hour, we actually get to see a decathlon event. But even then, only one. Why doesn't NBC think we'd like to see more of an event that they claim results in "the best athlete in the world?"
- Finally, praise for the something that NBC got almost completely right, Greco-Roman wrestling. NBC started off with a four-minute puff-piece on Russian champion Aleksandr Karelin that used a voice-modulation technique so bizarre I thought I was watching "Rocky IV" ("I vill crush you!"). They followed that by the pre-match announcers saying that if American Rulon Gardner upset the Russian in this event, it would be another "Miracle on Ice." I was only half-heartedly paying attention at this point, but hype like that caught my ear, so I noted it, planning to mock it later. But then, what to wondering eyes should appear but something that GM has tried to script for 12 days --and I almost hate to say this-- an "Olympic Moment." Gardner, looking like a pudgy doughboy against the cut, muscular Russian, outstrategized and outfought Karelin and I swear, it was just like someone wrote it out this way: The crowd chanting "U-S-A" for the last thirty seconds. The obvious frustration on the Russian's face. The silent surrender by Karelin with two seconds left as he realized he'd just lost for the first time in his 13-year career. And the pure joy by not only Gardner, but his wife, who had tears streaming down her face as she screamed "He won! He won!" to Gardner's father over someone's borrowed cell phone. By God, I get misty-eyed just writing it! And for once, just once, in the past twelve days, someone at NBC had the good judgement to get out of the way and let the story tell itself. I still think the "Miracle on Ice" comparison is kind of out of proportion, but finally, NBC got at least one story that they can count as a gold medal. See you Thursday!
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