So I know it’s all the rage to complain about the Olympic coverage and commentating, but this getting ridiculous, so I have to devote one post to it.
The other day when the women’s aerials were postponed due to weather, I thought, “Great, they’ll show more of the other sports, and we’ll see aerials on Tuesday, instead of three of the lower-ranked women’s figure skaters’ short programs.” Well, instead of more sports coverage, they bring out Jerome Bettis and compare his fumble against Indianapolis with Lindsey Jacobellis’ showing off at the end of her snowboard cross run. Hmm. I don’t think so. Yes, Jerome wanted to score, and yes, if Rothlisberger didn’t make that tackle the Steelers would have been in trouble. But he wasn’t showing off, just a little relaxed. And hey, wait a minute, why are we discussing this anyway? I know you want to plug him for Sunday night foorball, but you have Madden and Michaels and ANOTHER SIX MONTHS until preseason. And the rating aren’t that great (I wonder why) so most of your audience is watching American Idol right now anyway.
Sorry. That just needed to be said.
In addition, I think Apolo Anton Ohno deserves a gold medal for putting up with Bob Costas. He didn’t shirk any of his questions. Being a medalist in the Olympics is an amazing accomplishment, and yet the only thing Costas wanted to know was how bad Ohno felt for not getting the gold. Ohno has a wonderful perspective. He has gained an appreciation for how difficult it is to get on the podium, something I wish these announcers understood. It takes talent, preparation, and even a bit of luck (just ask Michelle Kwan about the timing of her injury). In a sport like Ohno’s, you could be taken out and injured by a competitor, and you could draw a difficult heat (which he did en route to that bronze).
And speaking of Jacobellis, can you let Lindsey alone? She got caught up in a moment, and the media, who were once all over her for being so good (and heaping on the pressure), have now turned on her. And you know what, she’ll remember that moment for the rest of her life and have to deal with the fact that she had a gold medal in her sight (and she’s in another sport where one wrong turn by an opponent and your chance at the podium is gone, so this may have been her only shot) and lost it. But she didn’t fail a drug test, and she didn’t intentionally injure and opponent, she just wanted to show the world how she was feeling and try an exhilerating trick, and she hurt only herself. If she had made the trick, the coverage would have focused on how talented she was to be able to do that at the end of the race and come away with gold, and that picture would have been plastered on a Wheaties box. So to the media, leave her alone. And to Lindsey, good luck in 2010.
And one last comment to NBC: you have five channels of coverage. During the summer Olympics, I had 3 TVs in my living room and watched as much of the coverage as I possibly could. Now, the second TV stays off, as the only coverage not on NBc is curling and ice hockey that is on at a different time and can thus be recorded. I know there are fewer events than the summer games. But how about showing them? How about putting all but the top 12 womens figure skaters on USA, to save room to show all 12 of the finalists’ two aerial jumps on prime time. (How long do those take? 30 seconds? I was so confused when that Chinese man started hugging his coach, because I thought there were at least 4 jumpers left.) You are not losing viewers to American idol because of a lack of athlete profiles (make MSNBC carry nothing but profiles, and you’ll see that they won’t carry the cable ratings), but because of a lack of balanced coverage of the actual events. And Al Trautwig was evidently told to make us realize that biathlon and crosscountry skiing are exciting, because he kept saying “Wow, look how close that race was. See, this is fun!” Of course, if he had just covered the races, they were speaking for themselves, and he did not need to treat us like second graders at a museum “See, that Van Gogh is really exciting! Look at all the colors!”
And a silver medal is not a miserable failure. It’s an amazing accomplishment.
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