The Olympic Rant by William Spencer (I originally wrote this in a fit of extreme irritation about NBC's coverage of the 2000 Olympics in Australia. I never posted it - the writing was catharsis enough. But, I see that the Olympics are rolling around again, and we will doubtless get more stunning examples of the peak of sports reporting in the United States, so I brushed the dust off the text file and cleaned it up a little. Whenever I say "NBC", you can insert the name of whichever corporation has got the contract THIS year; there's no real difference, is there? Oh, it is NBC again? Well, that makes it more relevent, then, doesn't it? And my sincere apologies to all the Americans other than denizens of the United States of America; I'm quite aware that you Canadians, Mexicans, Peruvians, etc. are different from us. At least, I hope you are. Here it is:) This is a rant. If you think that NBC's coverage of the Olympics is the greatest thing since individually- wrapped cheese slices ­ and, judging from the posts on NBC's "Feedback" website back in 2000, no one does - you do not want to read this. The Olympics is about the only sporting event I ever try to watch - I like the international competition, the different games you don't usually hear about, seeing the nations peacefully (more or less) coexisting, etc. Unfortunately, I've been...appalled at NBC's coverage. And I'm not the only one. Actually, all American coverage has bugged me. ABC screwed up Nagano, NBC screwed up Sydney, CBS has probably or will probably screw up one of them - and, thanks to the virtual monopoly that whichever company has over coverage in a particular year, the viewers have to take it or leave it. (I have to ask, sports fans - are these companies' coverage of REGULAR sports this bad?) And NBC was wondering why ratings were at an all-time low. My gripes include: The inability of commentators to SHUT UP while we're trying to watch and hear the opening ceremonies. Or the games. The technical term is "diarrhea of the mouth." The inability of the producers to realize that THIS IS NOT RADIO. Television is a VISUAL medium. The commentators do NOT need to describe what is going on - especially the stuff that would be obvious to anyone with working eyes. On the other hand, if the intent is to describe things so that those without working eyes (i.e. the blind or otherwise visually-impaired) can know what is going on, the description needs to be much, much better. Commercial breaks every five minutes. The "Mystery Science Theater 3000"-style staging. The commentators do not need to comment on every little thing, and we especially do not need to see them doing so. The commentators keep repeating themselves. Either their dialogue writers need to dig into a good thesaurus, or the commentators need to give in, put on glasses, and lean a little closer to the TelePrompTer. The commentary dialogue itself isn't so great, either. With 18 hours of editing before final rebroadcast, you'd think the writers could come up with better lines. Commercial breaks every five minutes. Constant repetition of the blatantly obvious facts that the whole world is watching this, that each participant bears the burden of representing their entire country, et cetera, et cetera. The cute little personal anecdotes and jokes the commentators make, in a futile attempt to make it appear as if they have lives. If I wanted witty banter between interesting personalities, I'd buy the "Bob Costas & Katie Couric: Live at the Sydney Opera House" comedy album. All together now: "This is what the Olympics is all about. This is what the Olympics is all about. This is what the Olympics is all about." Sick of hearing it yet? Commercial breaks every five minutes. There was music during the opening ceremonies? [One person on the NBC "Give Us Feedback" website put it a better way: "The loud music was drowning out what the commentators were saying."] Interrupting the "live" coverage of the opening ceremonies with TAPED interviews with other people. The worst example of this - a day that will live in infamy - was at Nagano: for a whole week whichever network it was hyped the fact that we would hear choirs all over the world singing the finale to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, through a synchronized satellite broadcast. A stunning piece of music and an intriguing technological feat - interrupted after the first verses by a prerecorded interview with Michelle Kwan. THAT's the sort of thing that makes spectators cry. Commercial breaks every five minutes. Pretending that this is live. Whenever the commercials were interrupted for a few minutes of the opening ceremonies, I realized that we had missed a few minutes of the ceremonies. (I didn't know how much until I opened the newspaper the next morning. I was NOT pleased.) If I watch a movie filmed fifty years ago, and we go to a commercial break for five minutes, do I miss the next five minutes of the movie? Usually not. So why do I miss five more minutes of the Games when they were taped 18 hours ago? (And now I hear the Games in Salt Late City will also be on tape delay - I'm in California, just one time zone away, but I guess that will be enough time for the producers to get their little claws into the footage.) Some of the directors at NBC seem to be operating under the misguided conception that this is a made-for-T.V. movie, not news. Perhaps these were the directors who weren't good enough to get into Hollywood, top T.V. studios, or film school, but they've always wanted to create films that would speak to the entire world. Now they have their big chance - with a captive audience - and will try to turn simple current events reporting into a suspenseful extravaganza of tight close-ups, dramatic slow motion, misty flashbacks, breathless commentary and "stunning" (i.e. cheap) computer animation. Commercial breaks every five minutes. A real LONG break this time, because we're at the top of the hour. Following is the transcript of all Olympic interviews: Q: "So how do you feel about winning the [blank] medal in [blank]?" A: "Oh, it's great!" Q: "How do you feel about being here at the Olympics?" A: "It's really wonderful to be here." Q: "I suppose this must be a momentous occasion for you." A: "Oh, yes. Definitely." Q: "This was a great struggle for you, considering that terrible bout of personal insecurity you suffered last year." A: "Yeah, but you have to keep trying and just do your best." Q: "Well, thank you and good luck on your next competition." A: "Thanks!" (And perhaps a few lines about how talented the other competitors are,which is sportsmanlike, but also painfully obvious.) Skipping over some of the countries during the Parade of Nations, the medal ceremonies, and the competitions, to make way for more important things, like commercial breaks. Which makes sense, I suppose - the media corporations probably have higher annual incomes than they do. The slightly (okay, okay: VERY) condescending attitude about the quaint little ways of foreign cultures, making it seem as if everyone else in the world is uncivilized savages or idiotic children and we are the epitome of world civilization. Which is funny, because it's more often the other way around - the U.S. is usually the odd one out. But that's another story... Commercial breaks every THREE minutes, just in case you weren't payingattention. Constant delving into the irrelevent personal details of the athletes (or, for us Americans, athaleets), attempting to make every minute seem like an intense personal struggle, the culmination of their entire life, and so on. This usually involves: (A) for older athletes, finding some painful period in their past ("...he suffered from a traumatizing post-prandial distention in 1976..."), completely ignoring the fact that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD reaches hard times sooner or later. (B) for younger athletes, emphasizing their youth and how they've "come out of nowhere" to excel so much more than the commentators in their field, completely ignoring the facts that nearly ALL Olympic athletes are world-class (that's the point, I thought) and that many of the sports (like gymnastics and ice skating) always have a low starting age these days. (Perhaps twenty years ago it wasn't the case, but the blatherers don't mention that.) (C) for famous athletes, yammering about how famous they are, especially in their home country where everyone watches their games. No, really, EVERYONE - even those who don't like the sport, who can't afford a television, who root for the athlete's rivals most of the time, etc. They are second only to Jesus, the Buddha, or Mickey Mouse in the hearts of their people. (See "The slightly condescending attitude..." above.) This "soap opera" aspect is, I hear, intended to appeal to female viewers, who according to the demographic studies are more likely to watch the Olympics than other sporting events. Obviously, NBC has a different perception of women than I do; they haven't seen my grandmother and aunts watching the Super Bowl, or all those "soccer moms" at their kids' games. Commercial breaks every five minutes. I know, I know, it's picky, and it annoys so many of you to keep hearing it, but - the New Millennium started January 1st, 2001. The first Olympics of the 21st century will be the 2002 Olympics, not the 2000 Olympics. Couldn't we do the "everything you wanted to know about [insert nation here]'s history but were afraid to ask" bit BEFORE or AFTER the stuff has happened? Why must we give the viewers this information while they are trying to concentrate on the event? Ditto for the "biography of famous ski stretchers" and the "high jump historical retrospective"? All if all this information is available on the network website, why do we have to hear about it anyway on the television? We do not see all the sports. We will only see a sport if: (A) the average American can pronounce its name without snickering, (B) an American has a chance to win a medal in it, and (C) that American did not totally screw up. We do not see all the participants in a sport. You will only see: (A) the American, (B) the person who will actually win (or if, surprisingly, the American won, the person who gave them a close contest), and (C) the person who provides crowd appeal or comic relief. The local player - for the 2000 Olympics, it would be the Australian - will be mentioned in passing. Anyone else, no matter how good they actually are, will be utterly ignored. The attitude that nothing less than a gold medal will suffice - that receiving "only" a silver or bronze medal is almost as bad as not placing at all. As if "second best in the entire world" isn't a worthy goal. Commercial breaks every five minutes. Ha! I bet you thought I'd forgotten. Those annoying computer graphics that cover the screen, attract the eye, interrupt the flow of the action, and convey absolutely no useful information. A discrete icon or text bar would be far less annoying - or, better yet, do nothing! The Network's continuing cluelessness. I kept reading in the newspaper that NBC had absolutely no idea why ratings were dropping like a rock through a wet paper bag. Their brilliant solution to the problem was to say "I guess Americans don't care about the Olympics" and to keep doing what they were doing, only worse. One spokesperson said that the ratings were dropping because there wasn't "any unifying story tying the Games together." It sounded like they were hoping for a repeat of the Munich Games - maybe next time NBC will HIRE some terrorists to raise ratings. It may all be available on video tape (order now, must be 18 years or older, all major credit cards accepted), but how do I know that they didn't screw up the video tape version, too? Commercial breaks every five minutes, but now the breaks are twice as long, because ratings are dropping and we have to keep our sponsors happy. Oh, the Olympics THEMSELVES were cool - what I saw of them - but not even the Networks can ruin that entirely. But they sure try, don't they? Award for most honest commercial of the 2000 Olympics goes to: VISA "Let's take a break from all that over- commercialization and just watch the pure Olympic competition...right, that's long enough." Award for most irritating commercial of the 2000 Olympics goes to: VISA Where they gave a hearty "Congratulations!" to the winner of the women's pole vault competition - in the commercial break just before that person competed and the winner was announced. Oops. Some suggestions for NBC - and their competitors - for next time: Don't Bid On The Next Games. [Another quote from the "Feedback" site. Somehow I suspect that NBC was hoping for PLEASANT feedback from that website. Too bad for them, huh?] Failing that, keep this in mind: WE JUST WANT TO WATCH THE GAMES. That INCLUDES the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony, and all the medal ceremonies (with the FULL national anthem of the winner's nation!). Anything else is peripheral to that. Or, to put it another way, we don't care about "story" - we're watching a sporting event! The "story" is "someone wins, someone loses." To paraphrase yet another comment on the "Feedback" site: this is "The Olympic Games", not "NBC's Olympics (TM)". Have a little more respect for the American attention span. People with the attention span of gnats, while a major demographic group, probably do not watch the Olympics anyway. (One exception to the "Couldn't we do the 'everything you wanted to know...'" complaint above: Informing us of the rules to an event is an acceptable use of air time, but please do it BEFORE the event and not DURING the event. Thank you.) Heck, since we're on tape delay, we can cram even more competition in by just cutting the inbetween stuff - drinking water, tightening wrappings, looking pensive, talking to interviewers. Yes, some of the drama is lost, but we can see more competition, which is the point of the Games, right? Computer graphics: let form follow function. Using a computer is no excuse for bad design, especially in this day and age. In fact, isn't skipping the schmaltz and blather cheaper? The footage of the Games has already been shot, but the interviews, studio shots, and flashbacks need additional footage and editing time. Cut that stuff and you save money and can show more of the Games. (Why am I emphasizing cost? What do you think is the one thing that a corporation cares most about?) Finally, imagine if REGULAR sports coverage was like this: "...Johnson avoids Smith, dodges around to the side, and now he's got the ball, he's going for the endzone, the crowd is going wild, he's going all out and...now it's time for a Super Bowl Moment. Johnson started playing football in high school, and even then, he knew that he wanted to be in professional sports. But little did he know that there were dark times ahead...but first, these important messages..." Oh, and don't show commercial breaks every five minutes. (And I don't mean show them every four or three instead.) I mean, who watches T.V. for the commercials? Most of us have mute buttons on our remotes anyway... And, here's a suggestion to the rest of us for making the watching of this awfulness more bearable: Mute the T.V. and put on some music. My family found that the Rolling Stones meshed well with the images. I've almost entirely given up watching the Olympics, because I get progressively more annoyed the longer I watch. And, as I've said before, I'm hardly the only one. But we members of the television audience hold a great power over the networks' collective head: we can turn the T.V. OFF. (If, for some strange reason, you wish to copy and distribute this document, I give my permission, provided the document is not altered in any way and this credit is included: "The Olympic Rant" Copyright 2000-2001 William Spencer I can be contacted at shadowjack@subdimension.com)