Appealing to the lowest common denominator

[trinityvixen]

It's already a given that there are favorite sports in the Olympics. We like things that are pretty or whose physical prowess is demonstrable in a dramatic way. Gymnastics, we know, is always going to the get the coverage that handball, volleyball (note: except beach volleyball), softball, even basketball, aren't. It's just so pretty and surprising and scary and amazing. The track and field events will get their day, but there's definitely a reason they drag out the gymnastics events over the entire two weeks of coverage. You could do all the individual medal events--the beam, the bars, etc.--in a day or two. But why? The better to spread them out and have people tuning in each night for twenty minutes. Maybe they'll stay and watch other stuff!

It works, so they'll never stop doing it, but the coverage is agonizing. They cut away and cut between things. Our other broadcasting prejudice--to only display those countries as are good/likely medal contenders, the host country, and ours--make it even worse. Here's some gymnastics! Well, ours, China's, and some of Japan, but they're only silver medalists. They're not the plucky USA team that shouldn't even be here! Wait, Michael Phelps is doing something! Cut to him listening to his iPod! GREAT STUFF.

Actually, I'd like to see all of the event, good or no. I'd love to know when in the event something is going to happen or not, and not be yanked every ten minutes between sports. NBC is tempting me to set up the DVR recording for the first two hours, ignore it, and then come back and watch on fast forward until I catch up with real time because this schedule is nuts. Even Bob Costas is like, "Sorry folks, this is no way to broadcast a jumping frog race, and it's going to go on for another week."

Comments

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can't really criticize the gymnastics coverage from last night. In the arena, 4 teams are always competing at the same time, and the camera can only really switch between 2 of them--last night, usually the top 2 of China, Japan, USA, Russia, and at the end, Germany. I wish they had shown more of the first half of the competition, but there were swimming finals.

I wouldn't mind any of the TV shenanigans if they'd broadcast everything live online. All the minor events, I can watch in their entirety live online, if I'm willing to stay up in the early morning. The major events (gymnastics, swimming) get partial coverage live on the networks. The middle-popularity events get completely screwed; I haven't been able to watch any diving yet because NBC won't broadcast an event online that they're willing to put on a network. Boxing is in the same boat.

Weightlifting was fun to watch online, though. They got a good text commentator, though an annoying delay had him telling us that a lift was good before we got to see the actual lift.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

At least I got to see one fencing bout--but that's only because all three medalists were USA and it was the first gold medal for the US this year.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I should also add--the commentators knew jack shit about fencing. They were going oh, uh, look at how fast that was. I had to explain the rules of a sabre match to my cousins.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You watched the gymnastics, right? It felt like they all were drunk or high or something. They referred to one of the Chinese gymnasts on the rings as being "silly strong." (Technical term, you know.) One of the releases on the high bar was "crazy difficult." Alas, they stopped before things were "wicked hard" or "mad powerful" or I would have known for sure they were toking up in their booth.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I watched some of the fencing live; unfortunately, they had no text commentary for the Round of 64, and I wasn't willing to stay up until 4 AM to watch the final rounds. Sabre was far too fast for me to figure out what was going on; epee was cool to watch.

Weightlifting commentary was impressive; they had a former national champion doing text and answering e-mailed questions from the audience.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Sabre's confusing because you can only score when you are attacking and there are complicated rules about who has right of way. So if you don't know that, you can be like--but she hit first? Why didn't she get the point? Plus they had those red and green lights which were displaying right of way, but were baffling until I figured out that's what was going on.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Aha, whence my dislike of fencing as a sport -- because in 1654, if you actually get stabbed with a sabre, guess what? You still die of an infection six days later!

Ahhh sports.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be so bad either if NBC weren't being control freaks about coverage. They've actually gotten all cease-and-desist-y on ISPs with sites that tried to stream any coverage in this country that weren't theirs. They have the rights in this country and they're jealously guarding them. That would be fine if they didn't do such a shitty job of having any sort of schedule available.

Their website is a morass, TV guide is no help, they can't even predict when they're going to do what, and they've got like three channels that they could use to broadcast stuff and they're not hardly doing it. ARGH.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

Well, NBC showed the diving last night, so it should be online presently.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I tried to watch some men's gymnastics last night and gave up when they started putting a "minutes to Michael Phelps" countdown clock in the corner. Yes, he's cool. But there are other people in the olympics.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

He is cool. He's amazing and well worth watching when he's in the pool. He's also doing something amazing with his medal count, so I get the excitement. I was very excited to watch him easily outdistance his next closest competitor by a body length. I still wanted to finish the gymnastics--all of it--first, thanks.