The Rockwood 2004 Olympic Watch Wrapup
I know, I know... I didn't get to this the day after the Olympics like I'd promised. To be honest, I was so glad to catch up on my sleep that I put it off. Besides, nothing new is happening anyway, so it's not like I'm going to miss any new news.
So, the most obvious thing to note is how much better NBC did this
Olympics than last Olympics. Or the last two Olympics. For that matter,
for all
the Olympics NBC has covered in recent memory. I can't even remember
at this point if NBC's coverage has EVER not been loaded down with
fluff. However, this year they very noticeably fixed that problem.
NBC had nine fewer hours of coverage in Athens than they did in Sydney
(71 versus 80 hours). However, they only lost one-and-a-half hours
of event coverage. Even ads only lost three hours or so of exposure.
The
biggest hit in Athens came in fluff, which dropped to a mere six
hours from Sydney's 10. Now, six hours is still a lot of fluff, but
whereas
NBC could have filled over three days of coverage in Sydney had they
replaced their fluff with events, in Athens they could have just
barely filled two days worth. That's a notable improvement.
And surprise of surprises, NBC's
ratings were up! I hasten to point out, once again, that the Olympic
Watch pointed out the necessary
stategy to boost ratings four
years ago.
I'll be waiting for your call of appreciation, Mr. Ebersol.
Anyway, on to the medal stand!
The Rockwood 2004 Olympic Watch Medal Ceremony
Much like in 2000, medals will be handed out to both the best AND the worst of NBC's Olympic coverage. Let's start with the good:
- Good Bronze Medal: I'm cheating here by declaring
a tie so I can get in one extra medalist. The bronze goes to the stories
on Rulon Gardner retiring and Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj finally winning
a medal after dominating his distance running sports for so long. Gardner's
piece was touching just because of Rulon himself, who is exactly the
kind of person you want representing your country in the Olympics. El
Guerrouj was probably the perfect example of not needing a fluff piece
to be inspirational. The short bio given for him mere seconds before
his race started provided all of the necessary information I needed to
cheer when he won.
- Good Silver Medal: Ancient Olympia Stadium. I
think, at least in part, that this was just NBC getting lucky on being
able to broadcast from a cool venue, but you have to be able to take
advantage of luck when it comes your way, and NBC did this in spades.
The shot put event was spartan in its execution, and NBC's coverage
did it justice. And even with Jimmy Roberts trying to ruin it, I still
thought it was cool. That says a lot right there.
- Good Gold Medal: Swimming and Diving. To borrow
some terminology from diving, although the degree of difficulty wasn't
very high, the execution was perfect. Both sports' television coverage
benefits greatly from the fact that their athletes movements are limited
to lanes or defined areas and the leaders are almost always easily
identifiable. But even given that, the reporters could have been bad,
the technology could have been misapplied...there are plenty of things
that could go wrong. However, nothing did, and every special effect
NBC used was not only flashy, but USEFUL. Add to that the fact that
Michael Phelps winning everything gave them a storyline that lasted
all week and you have the makings of a gold medal winner. Luck plus
talent equals gold, kids.
And now, the bad:
- Bad Bronze Medal: Coverage
of the U.S. Women's Soccer Gold Medal Game. Honestly, as good as
this story actually is, NBC should be ashamed
for butchering it as badly as they did. In a piece where they touted
the benefits of Title IX for women, NBC minimalized their accomplishments
by treating them like "those cute little girls who won a medal." Title
IX is supposed to be making things equal, NBC. You treated the gold
medal soccer team like a novelty. Would you treat any gold medal
men's team this way? I think not.
- Bad Silver Medal: Sunday, August 29, 2004. Rather
than damn NBC's coverage as a whole, I've chosen to pick on the one
day where they really, really screwed up. Nearly one-sixth of NBC's
fluff total for the entire Olympics came on this one day. On Sunday,
there were more minutes devoted to fluff than to advertising. Worst
of all, this one day had more fluff than any other single day in either
the 2000 or 2004 Olympic Watches. Shame, shame, shame.
- Bad Gold Medal: C'mon.
He's the defending Olympic Watch champion! Who else could it be but
Jimmy Roberts. Admittedly, it was closer this
year as Jimmy's segments were shorter and less schmaltzy than in 2000.
However, they were still so sugary that I had to eat something salty
afterwards. And now that I've figured out Jimmy's writing style, it's
even worse. I spend the entirety of his pablum trying to finish his
sentences. The horrifying thing is that no matter how cloying my guesses
are, Jimmy always tops me. His well of empathetic drivel never runs
dry. I have to give him gold because out of everything NBC throws at
me during the Olympics, he's the only thing that can't be beaten down.
He's the Alexander Karelin of
Olympic fluff pieces. He's unstoppable. If only there was a Rulon
Gardner of
reporting who could bring him down.
So that's it for this year. Once again, I watched far too much television and got far too little sleep. And once again, for those of you who somehow got here from other random places, I encourage you to take a stroll over to the main page where I'll still be putting out three comic strips a week.
And will I be doing this in 2006 or 2008? Who knows what will happen
in the future? I certainly won't rule it out since by then I'll have
probably forgotten how much sleep I miss by doing this (and no, going
back and re-reading it never helps).
One last thing before I close this out, because I think this is funny.
While this can obviously change over time, look what comes up second
when you go to Google
and type in "Jimmy Roberts" and "Emmy."
I'm so proud. See you in Torino
in 2006!
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2004 Brian Lundmark, all images and text on this page.
All rights reserved. Tell
me about it!
