Ebersol on the Olympics

[JW]

It really is written by Joe Posnanski this time:

http://sportsonearthblog.com/2012/08/08/for-dick-ebersol-its-simple-were-here-to-make-great-television/

While I understand what Ebersol is saying (and NBC is doing), it's an
approach that makes the Games less interesting to me.

[PGage]

Again, it really is necessary to distinguish between the primetime Olympic show, and the actual Olympic Games. Ebersol is talking about the former monstrosity, which for the most part must be seen as some kind of Reality Show, and is where NBC makes most of its money back. But a majority of the Olympic events can be seen, on a live or near-live basis, in non-primetime hours across the family of networks, and NBC is doing a pretty good to good job covering the events there. By my calculation (see below if interested) portions of at least 80% of the Olympic events have been shown on a live or near live basis, and for a good number of these events we have seen complete, live or near live coverage of substantial games or matches, in many cases including a good selection of non-USA competitors, almost always with competent announcers and expert commentators.

No thoughtful critic of the Olympics is really arguing against the NBC Ebersoled Primetime Show (no thinking person is complaining that NBC is showing taped coverage of the Olympics during primetime). What they are arguing against is NBC's foolish, selfish, counterproductive and stubborn policy against showing prime events live during the day in addition to the packaged, edited, personalized story-telling Reality Show event that NBC uses to make back as much of the ridiculously overpaid rights feeds it paid for the Olympics.

The realyl tragic victim of Ebersolization is the track and field tournament. I can find a reasonable excuse for almost all of NBC's primetime sins, except for when it makes Americans wait sometimes 10 hours to see the finals of the signature, defining events followed by hundreds of millions around the world. Putting an embargo on the 100 meter sprint really is very close to to NBC spending millions on rights to televise the SuperBowl, and then putting it on in a primetime 10 hour tape delay. They just butcher the premier track and field tournament in the world - which hurts all the more because they really do have excellent commentators working the event. And the worst of it is that it is so unnecessary. Most of the 80% of the audience that Ebersol says prefer to watch the games after dinner would still watch it even if the events had been shown live on the NBC Sports Channel earlier in the day. Certainly there is no reason to think that showing it live on an NBC niche cable channel would significantly increase knowledge of the winners in an American audience that has so much access to the results from other, much more convenient sources.

It is hard to decide on a good list of all Olympic events - I have seen them listed in different categories, some of which lump or split games differently from each other, and from my experience of them (for example, while some lists lump team and beach volleyball together, I think these are clearly 2 distinct events). I am using the following list, (from: http://www.topendsports.com/events/summer/sports/index.htm) which makes categories that fit with my subjective experience, except that I would lump sailing, canoeing and rowing, and I would lump Pentathlon in with Tack and Field) :

1.     archery

2.     badminton

3.     basketball

4.     **beach volleyball

5.     boxing

6.     canoe / kayak

7.     cycling

8.     **diving

9.     equestrian

10. fencing

11. field hockey

12. **gymnastics

13. handball

14. judo

15. **modern pentathlon

16. rowing

17. sailing

18. shooting

19. soccer / football

20. **swimming

21. synchronized swimming

22. table tennis

23. taekwondo

24. tennis

25. **track and field

26. triathlon (swimming, biking, running)

27. volleyball

28. water polo

29. weightlifting

30. wrestling

I have added asterisks by the sports that have been hijacked and someone ruined by the primetime show; of the 30 events, only 6 have been "Ebersoled". That's 20%. NBC gave us substantial live coverage for most of the rest of the 80% of the event (including live coverage of a whole lot of the preliminary heats in swimming and track). Boxing and Tennis each had their own dedicated channel, with live coverage throughout. Live Coverage of the 6 true team events (Basketball, Team Volleyball, Field Hockey, Handball, Soccer, Waterpolo) has been truly excellent. I think we saw every one of these events involving the USA live and complete, but we also saw a number of games that did not involve Team USA, often  live and complete, sometimes near live, and/or joined in progress. We also got substantial live and near live coverage of some of the more niche sports, though these often either focused only on US competitors, special interest competitors, or medal rounds. The commentating on these events were good to very good, though most of these used the technique of commentators in the NY bunker working to a live feed from Great Britain.  I guess I could bitch that I could not find live coverage of the quarterfinal Sabre matches (which I wanted because my daughter was in attendance), but it was easy enough for me to watch that live online (sans commentary). And even then I would have to note that I was able to see live, complete, early round coverage of the Brazil-Egypt match that my daughter attended in Cardiff, even though Team USA was nowhere near it, and one of the teams was rather marginal in the tournament.

As far as the 6 Ebersoled events go, the only ones I really lament are the track and field (including pentathlon).  Beach Volleyball is almost completely a made for TV event, it seems to me that complaining about tape delayed and USA-centric coverage of that is similar to complaining that the old "Superstars" was shown on ABC edited and on tape delay. Gymnastics is NBC's main moneymaker, and is probably most popular with the huge part of its audience which does not know or like sports in general, and mostly likes the melodrama, artificial or real. I think you could make the case (though it would be close) that there is more real drama in Gymnastics than in "The Bachelor", and the overlap in the audiences for those two shows is probably very close, so, even though NBC's coverage of Gymnastics is a true abomination, I try to put it in context. Swimming has long been bastardized by NBC - a real international sporting event participated in by tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of their family and friends at the high school and college levels, but sacrificed by the network to the mass audience who are attracted by its simplicity, its domination by Americans which somewhat artificially pumps up the Team USA medal count, and its potential for creating teen heartthrobs due to its near naked, well toned athletes. Same applies, though not as much, to diving; and NBC does a much better job of covering diving than it does gymnastics and swimming - I think for one reason that US athletes can not be counted on to be in medal contention, so they are more likely to cover it straight. Diving is also an example of a sport that is actually better to watch on a tape delayed basis, where they can edit out all of the down time where literally nothing is happening.

[PGage]

On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 11:30 AM, PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 3:47 AM, JW <redb...@gmail.com> wrote:

It really is written by Joe Posnanski this time:

http://sportsonearthblog.com/2012/08/08/for-dick-ebersol-its-simple-were-here-to-make-great-television/

While I understand what Ebersol is saying (and NBC is doing), it's an
approach that makes the Games less interesting to me.

Again, it really is necessary to distinguish between the primetime Olympic show, and the actual Olympic Games. Ebersol is talking about the former monstrosity, which for the most part must be seen as some kind of Reality Show, and is where NBC makes most of its money back. But a majority of the Olympic events can be seen, on a live or near-live basis, in non-primetime hours across the family of networks, and NBC is doing a pretty good to good job covering the events there. By my calculation (see below if interested) portions of at least 80% of the Olympic events have been shown on a live or near live basis, and for a good number of these events we have seen complete, live or near live coverage of substantial games or matches, in many cases including a good selection of non-USA competitors, almost always with competent announcers and expert commentators.

(SNIP) The really tragic victim of Ebersolization is the track and field tournament. I can find a reasonable excuse for almost all of NBC's primetime sins, except for when it makes Americans wait sometimes 10 hours to see the finals of the signature, defining events followed by hundreds of millions around the world. Putting an embargo on the 100 meter sprint really is very close to to NBC spending millions on rights to televise the SuperBowl, and then putting it on in a primetime 10 hour tape delay. They just butcher the premier track and field tournament in the world - which hurts all the more because they really do have excellent commentators working the event. And the worst of it is that it is so unnecessary. Most of the 80% of the audience that Ebersol says prefer to watch the games after dinner would still watch it even if the events had been shown live on the NBC Sports Channel earlier in the day. Certainly there is no reason to think that showing it live on an NBC niche cable channel would significantly increase knowledge of the winners in an American audience that has so much access to the results from other, much more convenient sources.

I should add that NBC does not even embargo all of the Ebersolized events. For example, we got the Men's Beach Volleyball live today, and I think 4 of the Decathlon events.

[Mark Jeffries]

Well, yeah--it's the *men's* beach volleyball.  :)

 

--
TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People!
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "TV or Not TV" group.
To post to this group, send email to tvor...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
tvornottv-...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en

[PGage]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Mark Jeffries <spotl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, yeah--it's the *men's* beach volleyball.  :)

That - and the US team had already been eliminated...