Olympic Coverage

[VP]

I love the Olympics but I hate American TV coverage of the Olympics. Some absurdities from this weekend.

1) The Olympics are on US soil and we're still showing almost everything on tape. What a joke. On his newscast, Tom Brokaw pulls the "turn away for a few seconds if you don't want to know" act for events to be shown later. I don't find such behavior tolerable even on weekdays, but on weekends????

2) How much snowboarding and other X-Game sports will we be shown? I'm of the mind that any sport requiring a judge is shaky, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt to figure skating and platform diving that have stood the test of time. "Look at the amplitude on that jump, Bob". "Wow, she really styled that, Kathy". Yeah, that's Olympic.

3) Men's Downhill - see 2) above, but also, I don't think they showed a single skier who wasn't either American or in the top 5 at the end of his run. Can't we see at least one unfortunate soul go tumbling off the course? Can we not have at least some sense of reality?

4) One tepid note of applause - there seemed to be less of the puff pieces filmed in athlete's hometowns; you know, the ones with the soft music and the interviews with mom and the high school coach. Maybe we'll get to see more of that when we get to ladies' skating.

I'm sure I'll think of more...

[Pseudolus]

I wish there had been more coverage yesterday - start earlier, don't cut away for some silly Allstar game.

I mostly agree with VP's comments, but there was one part of the downhill coverage that I really liked. There showed a comparison of a portion of the runs by two of the top finishers, essentially overlapping the "film" of one onto the other and playing it back in slow motion. It showed where one skier was able to hold to a good line and the other let himself slip to the outside just a little further. As someone who had trouble figuring out just why one skier was able to get down a few 1/100ths faster than another, I really appreciated this display.

[egg]

Yesterday's coverage was terrible. When they first came on in the afternoon - they said Instead of showing this speed skating coverage this afternoon, we are going to show it in primetime. In other words, we had the chance to show it live, but figured why not show 2 hours of snowboarding instead and tape delay the speed skating.

In fact the only thing that I think they are showing live is the hockey on CNBC (BTW, Germany in? Slovaks out? that is surprising).

That said I think once they get around to broadcasting the event they are doing pretty good. I like the overlap of the downhill skiing. I also liked the speedometer on the speedskaters (gives me a better feel for what they are actually doing) and the instantaneous pace off the leader. Fewer and shorter 'Up Close and Personals'.

Finally, I have written off all subjective scoring sports - I find it difficult to determine the difference between a 9.5 and 9.75 (or whatever scoring method). I am torn on ski jumping because it is 50/50 distance and "style" - What is exactly is the difference between a 19 and a 20? I understand if you bobble the landing you should be deducted, but after that what are they looking for?

[Shrek]

I didn't even bother with NBC (with the notable exception mentioned later), now that I have the option of watching on CBC. Saw at least 30, probably more competitors in the men's downhill, a good chunk of the women's 3000m speedskating, a lot of the two runs of the luge and most of the K90 ski jump, with only one commercial break during the last 15 jumpers. On NBC in prime time, I stayed long enough to see 3 jumpers - ton of commercials - 3 more jumpers - then left when they broke again for commercials.

[Han Solo]

I have to agree. The wife and I were watching over the weekend and were wondering if NBC was ever going to show an athlete from another country.

[egg]

I am jealous Buzz. It is only made worse becuase I used to be able to watch CBC. Can someone tell NBC to watch CBC so they know how to broadcast the olympics?

[Anonymous]

And NBC's got CNBC plus MSNBC to spread some fo the coverage around and get some more live stuff on, but do they ?

I think you now know why the U.S. hockey games are starting at 10 or 11pm, wouldn't want to have the audience split between figure skating and hockey in prime time.

I noticed TSN's doing the curling and a bunch of the hockey live as well, so even those getting the CBC coverage are only getting a fraction of the Canadian live action.

[MathGuy]

I think it's amazing that I am the polar opposite of the people here: I watched the Women's half-pipe yesterday and found it incredibly interesting. There were obvious differences between the medal winners and the others. The people who got the highest, spun around the most, and didn't crash got the best scores. Then I watched the downhill skiing and saw three people all come in within 1 second of one another on a 3 mile long course. What's the point?

[VP]

agree, pseud and others- the skier overlap feature was very cool. Speedskating MPH also a plus.

The total hours thing is somewhat of a mystery to me. Once you spend upmteen million on the rights, why not inundate the airwaves? Surely the marginal cost of each additional hour is not that much. Aren't they totally ruling February sweeps with their crappy coverage? Why not at least have more crappy coverage? My wife is Canadian - she remembers the Olympics always being on as a kid. Oh to live in Detroit or Buffalo!!!! Side note - These "commitments" NBC has to Daytona and the NBA are shameful.

Yes, the hockey on CNBC is live - we found ourselves watching nearly as much Ger v Latvia last night as NBC.

[Schroeder]

I think NBC's coverage has improved from past year, but it still is not very good.

The improvement is that they show the event from start to finish. No more 15 minutes of speed skating, then 15 minutes of downhill, then 15 more minutes of speed skating, ... They start an event and then finish it.

On the bad side, they still spent 20 minutes yesterday on figure skating, even though nothing happened. What is with Bob trying to make a big deal over the fact that two of the american skaters ran into each other during warm ups. They are on the same team, they aren't going to say anything bad about each other.

Also, I waited all night to see luge and then they show it for maybe 10 minutes with 3 or 4 riders. They totally skipped the first run.

I agree with some of the previous post on the amount of time the games are being shown. Why is NBC showing an all star event instead of showing us some live action. Even next week they will waste half of Sunday on the Daytona 500 instead of the Olympics. We only get to see the olympics every 4 years, we can watch stock car racing every week.

[VP]

Someone made the point elsewhere that CBC shows so many hours because they have nothing else to show. I can't see how this doesn't apply to NBC. After all it's a given they're showing Olympics, or their version of it, during primetime. Essentially they're choosing to show Days of Our Lives and whatever other mindless daytime programming they have during the week. What did they have on before 3pm yesterday? I don't know what it was, but surely it was no cash cow. Why does coverage start at 8 and not 7? Can't pre-empt Wheel of Fortune? It seems their misguided aim is to get a lot of people watching at certain, small, focused times, and what they're going to end up with is making all unhappy.

[Woody]

I was quite surprised to not see Rahlves win the gold in the Men's Downhill. It seems that most of the time when NBC shows you a tape delay of an event, that usually an American ends up winning the gold, or at the very least, a medal.

[Actuary321]

On 2002-02-11 14:05, VP wrote:
It seems their misguided aim is to get a lot of people watching at certain, small, focused times, and what they're going to end up with is making all unhappy.

You all seem to think that NBC's goal is to Maximize Viewer enjoyment. NBC's goal is the bottom line and that means lots of people watching lots of commercials. And remember that it is not only this Olympics but future ones as well. If they get ratings up for this one then they can price the next ones higher to begin with.

[Actuary321]

On 2002-02-11 09:40, VP wrote:
2) ...I'm of the mind that any sport requiring a judge is shaky, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt to figure skating and platform diving that have stood the test of time.

What about Gymnastics?

I would classify figure skating right up there with the WWF. Yes it is judged but the judges give scores based on 1st, 2nd, and so on place. Once a judge give out their first place rating no other contestant can get a higher score from that judge. What kind of crap is that?

[Pseudolus]

On 2002-02-11 15:08, Actuary321 wrote:

Yes it is judged but the judges give scores based on 1st, 2nd, and so on place. Once a judge give out their first place rating no other contestant can get a higher score from that judge. What kind of crap is that?


Are you sure about that? I thought those "place" numbers the network shows after the scores were just for information - "the scores of judges A/B/C have graded the skater best than anyone else so far; the scores of judges D/E/F have graded the skater second best so far...".

[Dr T Non-Fan]

The ordinals, where each skater has placed on each judges scores, are what count.

However, the ordinals are NOT what the judge hands in. He/she hands in a number between 0.0 and 6.0 to the nearest tenth of a point.
First skater is in first place based on ordinals. Ordinals of judges can change during the competition, unless they are predisposed to giving Kwan 6.0 across the board, someone else 5.9 across the board, and so on.
There is a bit too much reputation imputed in the judges' scores, but there doesn't appear to be a better system.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

fricken double-post


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dr T Non-Fan on 2002-02-11 16:05 ]</font>

[VP]

On 2002-02-11 15:03, Actuary321 wrote:

On 2002-02-11 14:05, VP wrote:
It seems their misguided aim is to get a lot of people watching at certain, small, focused times, and what they're going to end up with is making all unhappy.

You all seem to think that NBC's goal is to Maximize Viewer enjoyment. NBC's goal is the bottom line and that means lots of people watching lots of commercials. And remember that it is not only this Olympics but future ones as well. If they get ratings up for this one then they can price the next ones higher to begin with.


Yes - that's not inconsistent with what I said. I specifically pointed to their aim to raise ratings for a small block of time. Evidentally they think that a few hours of very high-priced ads are better than many hours of high-priced ads. I'm no TV exec, but I don't think I agree with them. I don't think their prime-time ratings would suffer if they carried more non-prime-time coverage. If I have to live with Tom Hammonds talking head about figure skating on non-figure skating days to supposedly help prime-time ratings in exchange for more opportunities outside of prime-time, I suppose I could live with that.

Surely someone at NBC has done this analysis, but if they can make $10 million in advertising per hour with the current setup, they take in $1.055 billion for the 105.5 hours on NBC. If they expanded to 200 hours but could only make $8 million per hour, clearly they come out ahead (1.6 bil). Obviously I'm just making up numbers, and the 'real' numbers must lead to the opposite conclusion.

[VP]

From Drudge Report...

FLASH: NBC OLYMPICS CONTINUE TO PULL TOP AUDIENCE,,, SUNDAY 18.5 RATING/27 SHARE RANKS 3 X OVER NEAREST COMPETITOR... 62 SHARE PEAK IN SALT LAKE CITY MARKET... SATURDAY GAMES [17.8/29] GREAT OVER CBS '98 [13.4/22]...

[Dr T Non-Fan]

I see that the Women's downhill was postponed due to wind.
They really should rethink this whole Olympics in winter business.

[Actuary321]

On 2002-02-11 18:47, Dr T Non-Fan wrote:
I see that the Women's downhill was postponed due to wind.
They really should rethink this whole Olympics in winter business.

LOL.

Earl Holding, the owner of Snowbasin where the downhill is staged, put 75 - 100 million into the resort to prepare for the Olympics. You would have thought he could have almost built a dome for that much. :smile:

And did you see the mens coverage when they showed the part of the course where something had been sprayed on the snow to create ice. Looked to me like the lines my friends and I used to make at winter scout camp.

I knew I should have volunteered. I wonder who got that great job. :wink:

[Ammie]

[quote] I have the option of watching on CBC.
...
with only one commercial break. /quote]

The question is Buzz, can you watch the Tim's commercials with carving a burst? :smile:
I'm loving the CBC coverage, plus the details I get e-mailed by my friend (who's at the games monitoring the judges' scoring for figure skating). I have got to go home soon.

[Mick Fan]

Living just two hours from the Peace Bridge, I'm gonna have to cut my cable and get some good rabbit ears to pick up CBC. It sounds like they know how to broadcast the Olympics!

[Shrek]

On 2002-02-11 19:49, Ammie wrote:

The question is Buzz, can you watch the Tim's commercials with carving a burst? :smile:
Nah, the real question is how can I lay my hands on the CD offered by the bud light institute? I mean just look at the titles:

"It takes a special kind of woman to make sandwiches for the guys"
"Our relationship grows stronger with every game of golf I play" and of course
"You said I could go to the game (but I should have known you didn't mean it)"

[Aaron Brachowitz]

The TV problem is that most of the events are lousy sports viewing. Most of them involve mastering one technique and repeating it over and over (speed skating, luge, ski jumping, bobsled, cross country skiing, etc.). The difference between first place and 15th is usually tiny and is due to some minute flaw in technique apparent only to experts -- yawn. There's a reason why we only pay attention to these sports once every four years.

NBC doesn't show sports in prime time because sports doesn't draw a mass audience (i.e. women). That's why the Olympics (summer & winter) aren't packaged as sports but as entertainment, hence the bouncing around from event to event, the tape delay (so that each evening can be packaged for maximum dramatic effect), the puff pieces, the frequent hops "back to the studio," etc.

[Actuaress]

Does anyone know who won the gold in couples skating last night? I was pulling for the Canadians, but I couldn't stay awake any longer.

[lou]

The Canadians wuz completely robbed. They skated a flawless performance, the Russians made 4 errors, one of them a big one, and the Russians won by a 5-4 margin amongst the judges. I have not heard any expert say anything other than the decision was a joke. When the Canadians came off the ice, the announcers were guaranteeing a gold medal for them. (They skated after the Russians)

It was really a shame, but I guess it is nothing new in the sport.

[VP]

You're right Aaron, but that doesn't explain the daytime problem, particularly on the weekends. Last weekend, there were 5 hours of daytime network coverage. 5!! There should have been at least 2x that.

My comments about yesterday: I didn't think it was too bad; maybe even a little better than the weekend. It worked out to build up to the figure skating fiasco at the end; that was actually good television.

In 3.5 hours last night, they showed 10 pairs figure skaters (45 minutes at 4.5 min per pair). Besides that, there was less than 10 minutes of competition shown. (4 speedskating heats, 9 snowboarding runs, 4 luge runs)

As to your other point, Aaron, that these sports are bad for TV: that would seem to be borne out by their emphasis on events that are less repetitious (figskat and snowbrd); it's unfortunate that people's tolerance for luge is only 3 minutes. I'll concede I may be the exception and not the target of NBC's marketing.

[Shrek]

On 2002-02-12 09:47, Aaron Brachowitz wrote:

That's why the Olympics (summer & winter) aren't packaged as sports but as entertainment, hence the bouncing around from event to event, the tape delay (so that each evening can be packaged for maximum dramatic effect), the puff pieces, the frequent hops "back to the studio," etc.
I have yet to meet anyone, man or woman, who enjoys either the "puff pieces" or the hops "back to the studio." Why do the networks believe they are appealling?

[Big D]

An interesting piece on the sporting integrity of figure skating (http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/readstory.asp?story_id=2213978)

The article doesn't really present any hard evidence for cheating at these games, but consider this:
The Salt Lake competition will have judges from Russia, Italy, Israel, Ukraine, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Switzerland, Germany, Bulgaria and Poland. On the panel is Yuri Balkov, the Ukrainian judge who rattled off the order of finish before the free dance at the Nagano Games to Canadian judge Jean Senft, who recorded the conversation. When Senft presented the evidence to the International Skating Union, she was suspended along with Balkov.

How right are the "sources" used in the article? Who knows. If the order of finish is different from the one given here, the writer can just say that they changed the order to save face. But the fact that this Ukrainian has been allowed anywhere near a judges table at these games shows how serious the skating authorities are about having a fair competition.

[L. Mo]

I can't believe ya'll are surprised at the Russians winning. Tho I didn't watch it, myself.

I remember in the 94 games, Paul Wylie was robbed of the Gold in Men's Figure Skating to a Russian (whose name escapes me). The Russian fell on his butt, Paul did a flawless skate.

The usual explanation is "it's based not only on that performance, but on that skater's 'body of work' " or whatever. What a crock.

[sb_jim]

Bob Costas was mentioned in the Love Him, Hate Her thread. Since I don't really have a love/hate relationship with my TV I'll put my rant here.

I think Bob Costas is to sports as George Will is to ABC Sunday morning news with Sam and Cokie. Too dry, too much detail, and too much about his own personal interests. It's just sports so have some fun with it.

Oh, and I did have a strong like for Suzy Kolber. Strange trip from ESPN to Fox and back to ESPN. Is she married to Keith Olberman?

[VP]

That was odd.

I'd put Costas in the 'few redeeming qualities' column.

[egg]

In a completely unscientific poll the Detroit News (http://data.detnews.com/poll/survey.hbs?topic=Olympics_Network) says that 82% of the people watch CBC over CNBC. I wonder if NBC gets nielson ratings and wonders why they are so much lower where viewers have a choice between CBC and NBC. One of these years they might actually make the connection.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

If Katie were hosting, it might make for a better show.
There's no reason for the host to know that much about sports. It's not sports, really. It's about people who can hold the viewing audience enough to garner ratings and advertising dollars, so the network doesn't take a bath.

[Maine-iac]

I'll agree that the Canadians were robbed, but I have to disagree about Paul Wylie. He performed flawlessly, and thus earned his bronze or silver (can't remember which it was)medal. But he never ranked in the very top echelon, and did not attempt the level of difficulty that the gold medal winner did. The gold medalist sucessfully completed more difficult moves than Wylie did, though his errors on some things Wylie didn't try made for a less pleasing performance. Wylie's performance was admirable, his best ever, but not quite gold medal status.

[Ammie]

When Senft presented the evidence to the International Skating Union, she was suspended along with Balkov.

How right are the "sources" used in the article?

Big D, I'm pretty sure the above was true, heard via my skating friend. It's very sad.

[frummie]

On 2002-02-11 09:49, Pseudolus wrote:
I wish there had been more coverage yesterday - start earlier, don't cut away for some silly Allstar game.


Talk about your programming goofs, didn't the NBA and NBC know the Olympics were coming to not schedule the Allstar game during the Olympics? Blown opportunity for more ad revenue before or after Olympics.

Regarding the comment on downhill, it would have been nice to see more, but after a while it gets boring. I agree I would have liked to have seen the "Agony of Defeat". I love the luge and they only showed the American, the best Luger ever Georg (Gay-org, love the pronounciation, a la sound of music) Hackl and the eventual winner and maybe one more.

There is just so much they can show, because they need to fit in the interview with the parent of the Olympic champ who is a bartender last night. Wasn't it funny how Costas and the bartender were out of sync and kept stepping over each others words!

[Ducky]

NBC SUCKS!!!

Their Nascar coverage sucks, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they're tanking the Olympics as well.

[Mtl guru]

How right are the "sources" used in the article?

The story is true. She was in an interview today.

[Han Solo]

Did the French make a deal so the Russians would vote for them in the ice dancing?

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/winter02/figure/story?id=1330977

[lou]

If anyone still cares about this fiasco, I just heard on ESPN Radio that the IOC has recommended/ordered the score of the substitute judge to be used for the pairs instead of the French judge's score. This would give the gold to the Canadian's.

Waiting to hear confirmation. The source of this was Christine Brennan.

[Actuary321]

On 2002-02-12 18:36, frummie wrote:
There is just so much they can show, because they need to fit in the interview with the parent of the Olympic champ who is a bartender last night. Wasn't it funny how Costas and the bartender were out of sync and kept stepping over each others words!

Actually, the parents own the bar/resturant, the bartender is just an employee.

And the out of sync always happens when they use satelite links, sometimes it is worse than others and most people don't understand why the other isn't talking so they start, then when they here the other they stop. Not quite like talking on the phone.

[Ducky]

Anybody else notice that Tara Lapinski looks pretty hot nowadays.

[Aaron Brachowitz]

Come on, what is she -- maybe 4' 10" and 85 pounds? It would be like dating a 12-year-old.

[Mick Fan]

On 2002-02-12 11:34, sb_jim wrote:
Oh, and I did have a strong like for Suzy Kolber. Strange trip from ESPN to Fox and back to ESPN. Is she married to Keith Olberman?



Is Keith Olbermann back on ESPN?

[sb_jim]

Last time I saw Keith O. on TV was about a week ago on CNN. I think he was guest hosting someone's news-talk show.

I have a couple of Fox Sports promotional T-shirts with his picture on them that were given to me. Any e-bay value on these?

[Kid Rock]

On 2002-02-21 09:27, Aaron Brachowitz wrote:
Come on, what is she -- maybe 4' 10" and 85 pounds? It would be like dating a 12-year-old.

My wife is 4'11" and weighs 89-90 lbs. I can assure you she is no 12-year-old.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

I agree, but I think both could occur -- live and tape -- if there wasn't an agreement to release once-shown coverage to news outlets.
The other downside to taped coverage is that NBC might feel a need NOT to show some horrific accident. It might be seen as taking advantage of someone's near-death edge-catch, and some lawsuit would occur.

With live, there's always a lawyer-proof excuse.

Has there been any news on SportsCenter? I haven't caught any, although the crawlers always show the results.

[Ducky]

Anybody else notice that NBC has a line at the top of the screen that says "Recorded Live". What does that mean? Isn't everything shown on tape recorded "live" at some point?

"Recorded earlier" doesn't tell me too much either. If something being shown wasn't recorded earlier, then it's live footage.

Just another beef with NBC.

[Pseudolus]

I would guess that "recorded live" is intended to mean that the tape being shown is just what would have been broadcast if the event had been shown live: no editing for continuity, commentary taped along with the video, camera cuts called by a director during the events, etc. Basically, it means "we didn't mess with this".