NBC? OMG!

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I think I’ve finally figured out why NBC’s Olympics coverage is so … frustrating. It’s designed for people who hate sports and don’t want to watch them. Otherwise this makes no sense.

Last night, a 19-year-old runner from Grenada named Kirani James won the 400-meter race by a substantial number of feet…. This was all wonderful but, for some reason, the entire NBC broadcast crew decided that James’s talent and personality weren’t enough to carry the story. Or, perhaps, the story just wasn’t American enough. So they larded up their coverage with paeans to the moment in 1983 when Ronald Reagan arranged to liberate Grenada from the clutches of Cuban construction workers.

And in the amount of time they were going on about Ronald Reagan, they could have covered several pole vault attempts and maybe some wrestling.

22 thoughts on “NBC? OMG!”

  1. I always expected Olympics coverage would improve over the years, but it doesn’t seem to have done that. I just wanted to see as many competitions as they could show. I wanted as little commentary about anything, especially that unrelated to the Olympics. as possible. I didn’t get anything that I hoped for.

  2. BBC is no better. All the commentators tripping over one another, “Look how great I am at talking!”

    • BBC is no better.

      If they’re showing sports, they have to be better. It doesn’t matter if the commentary is awful. NBC is showing us everything but sports. I’ve seen at least two segments by two different reporters on the wonders of afternoon tea. Unless afternoon tea is a sport …?

  3. I think the 1984 LA games set the precedent.
    The USA had virtually no competition, after the Soviets, and member nations, backed out – as an “F-U” to us, after we backed out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

    So, what did the camera’s have to show?
    The Dutch ping-pong team?
    No!
    They showed EVERY single event Americans were in – and they were in LA, so there was no massive time difference. Except people on the East Coast had to stay up late.

    THAT was the Olympica that I lost interest.

    And whatever network has covered the games since, Winter or Summer, they now show mostly US teams and sports.

    If the Olympics weren’t in a Presidential election year, maybe I’d be more interested. But then, the Winter games are on off-year elections, and I can’t stand THAT coverage, either.

    It’s all too commercialized and professional.
    At least the major US pro sports make no bones about it.
    There are few ways to make a steroid or PEP user like Alex Rodriguez seem very sympathetic. You either root for him, or not.
    I get tired of them trying to every American in the games some figure of sympathy. Some are.
    Some aren’t.
    And they can’t seem either to learn the difference, or when to show some personal spotlight, and when to show the actual SPORTS – which is what everyone ostansibly tunes into to watch.
    OY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. Let’s back up a few steps.

    #1: Comcast owns NBC.
    #2: Profit uber alles.
    #3: Stupid sells.
    #4: U! S! A! U! S! A! AMERCIA!!

    There, that wasn’t too hard, was it?

  5. I don’t even bother to watch. It’s the same problem I have listening to certain college-radio jazz DJs — the ratio of footnotes to text is about 5 to 1. I don’t want to you to talk for seven minutes about every sideman’s life story before you’ll finally play a three-minute song, and I don’t want an eight-minute tearjerking short film about every American-themed human interest angle before I watch a sporting event — I just want to watch the damn event.

    And I’m sick of the America-centrism. You’ll think Gramps is talking, but when I was a lad, Olympic TV coverage in America sometimes actually focused on non-Americans. No, really! Jean-Claude Killy! Nadia Comenici! It was actually believed that Americans might occasionally cheer on someone who wasn’t American. It actually happened sometimes (e.g., in Nadia C’s case).

    But that was pre-Reagan, before the 1980 winter Olympics (U.S. hockey team) and ’84 summer Olympics (L.A. as the anti-Moscow, with jingoism as the main focus). Ever since, I’ve had no use for the games.

  7. I spent some of my formative years in the West indies. Many of my earliest memories and some of my most most awkward moments (junior high school) are rooted there. I knew a number of people from Grenada and I knew something of the pride and the hopes of the people of the West Indies. Reagan’s war still angers me. The West Indies seems to be producing a treasure trove of great runners.

    When I had a TV and satellite the only sports I watched were the Canadian lumberjack competition, sheep dog trials the Triple Crown races. The 24 hour curling station wasn’t invented yet.

    God bless Dominica!

  8. Part of the problem is that all the good sports announcers, producers, directors, etc., are all my age and have either retired or died. The younger ones work too hard to please their corporate bosses. Off-topic: speaking of my age, I just heard Marvin Hamlisch died. He was younger than I.

  9. Yes, and after James won in a time of 43,96 seconds, the announcer had the stupidity to say that James “was the first non-American to go under 44 seconds.”

    And exactly WTF is Grenada.

    And as far as the Ray-gun propaganda piece. Tells you how ignorant those Americans are.

  10. That’s what a good friend of mine calls baseball anymore (going to a game), baseball for people who don’t like baseball. All the things between innings, the Sausage Races or the Perogi Races if you’re in Pittsburgh,the endless noise from the PA. It’s not meant for baseball fans but for those that find them boring.

    The Olympic coverage during the day, on NBCSports or MSNBC has been pretty good, I think. Showing complete competition without many commercials. The stuff at night on NBC is nauseating. Did anyone watch Michael PHelps last swim in some relay?? The commentator should have been taken out and shot. He was awful, trying to create this sentimental “Oh, can you believe this is the last time the great Michael Phelps, THE GREATEST OLYMPIAN OF ALL TIME, will be in the water as an American”. About a half hour of that and I was ready to go to the local gun shop and purchase a 2nd Amendment remedy. And do they have to interview these athletes, they are terrible. They just don’t have anything to say. There’s just not much to say. They just won a gold medal, how do you think it feels??

  11. OMG

    Wow you’ve missed evrything as possible. Once FAUX gets away with pretrending that active duty folks are on thier side, over and out. NBC-OMG try over and out

  13. Here’s how I’ve watched sports for 20 of the last 30+ years, since the networks seem to have figured out that the only people watching their feckin’ sport coverage must be paste and booger eaters who have just arrived from some other planet, have just figured how to turn on the TV or radio, and have never seen athletic endeavors before – so they have their announcers try to explain every little thing, and the one who talks the loudest, must get a raise – WITH THE SOUND DOWN TO ALMOST NOTHING, AND READING A NEWSPAPER, BOOK, OR THE INTERNET!!!

    Jayzoos!
    Do they pay these announcers by the feckin’ syllable?
    How do you think this person feels after working at their sport since they were younger than Mozart when he wrote his first symphopny, and that person wins?
    What, “THE THRILL OF VICTORY?”
    And how do you think that person feels who loses, after over a decade of getting up before dawn and working at their sport, and then spending time after school, when other kids are PLAYING, again practicing their sport?
    What, “THE AGONY OF DEFEAT?”
    ‘You know Curt, I’m really glad I lost this race. I hate this feckin’ sport! And I’m really glad I disappointed my parents and my country, who spent a near fortune on me, and who all really should find something better to do than to sit around and watch some genetic freaks see how fast they can ______________. Sh*t, I’m looking forward to going to work at some fast food job, since I never bothered to learn anything except how to do this 14 hours a day, and handle questions from morons like you, who aren’t even smart enought to work the fryer, but are loud and obnoxious enough that you’re the Gold Medal Winner in Talking Over the Silver Medal Winner sitting next to you.
    You know, never mind the fast food joint. Where do I take lessons in ” Volume,” “Ego,” and major in “Inane,” so that I can have YOUR feckin’ job?”

    The last time I listened to announcers, was when the last great comedy duo since Abbot and Costello was handling baseball games – Bill White, and Phil Rizzutto. No one since then, with the early exception of John Madden, before he had a pompous injection, has been worth listening to since.

    The almost all make me HATE the sport I’m watching. AND I USED TO LOVE MOST SPORTS – until the networks started to hire loud egotistical nitwits, who think I’m actually as stupid as they are.
    KEEEERIST!!!

  15. Oh, quityerbitchin, Gulag; we could have Dennis Miller as a sports commentator again.
    Whose Idea was THAT?

  17. I read the article that Tom_B linked. It was worth the check out. That’s remarkable for Yahoo News. I wonder Romney’s “level playing field” includes oil subsidies.

    And now for something completely…

    This does tangentially apply to the coverage of the Olympics. Yahoo News seems remarkable to me for producing the most banal pablum imaginable. It’s purpose is to pique your interest but, leave you “unencumbered by the thought process” as Click and Clack would say. Their headlines seems always to include some celebrity wearing a funny dress or making a poor choice of tattoos. This is the culture “the market” has created. How can the coverage of the Olympics be much different? We’d love to see coverage that would inform us and inspire our withering souls. We would probably welcome mini tours of exotic lands and a small, but sincere glimpse into their ways of life. But, we can’t get there from here.

    Our market driven popular culture keeps us hungry for substance and it holds out a promise. But, it rarely, if ever delivers. We are looking for some meaning in the world and they convince us, for long enough to punch in our PIN, that the hole in our existence is precisely the shape of their new product or their fluffy celebrity tale.

    Here’s the scary part. In some ways, they know us better than we know ourselves.

  18. They DID have Rush and Miller on national broadcasts. I had forgotten that. How about having Ed Shultz and Al Franken on. That would never, ever, in a martian winter happen. And Al would be a hell of a lot more funny than Miller too. Tell me some more about this Left Wing Media.

  21. I quit watching the Olympics years ago after waiting for hours (announced every 5 minutes as “coming up”) until 1am when I went to bed, for figure skating to be aired. In the mean time we were being shown events that absolutely no one out here cared if he ever saw, interlaced between endless commercials, of course.

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