I realize that there is still 3 days until the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics so there isn't anything to review. I will however preview it from my vantage point right now because I will not likely be watching with any enthusiasm. Reason being, I miss Wide World of Sports and ABC coverage of the games. What ABC implicitly understood and NBC has destroyed in recent Olympic coverage is that the drama and compelling nature of the games is to live it in the moment. Yes, that means sometimes your coverage will miss - either in not capturing a compelling moment from the games or in covering an anticlimatic moment. However, we as the viewer, just like the producers don't know with certainty where those moments will come from. Like all sports you can hedge you bets and program for what is anticpated by the viewing audience and then let the chips fall where they may.
However, Dick Ebersol and the team over at NBC Sports has decided it knows best when it comes to what the viewer should/wants to see (think "The Truman Show" with Jim Carrey). I can not remember the last time I watched an Olympics that didn't feel manufactured and produced. I dare you over the next two weeks to tune into NBC in primetime and find an 8-11PM block that doesn't edit and jump around competitions as though my father had control of the remote on a Sunday afternoon. Today's Olympics is filled with pretaped 'profile stories' for atheletes, highlights of competitions (including the trials it took for them to get to the Games). The problem with this 'coverage' is that it leaves little time for that pesky thing called live coverage. I have forgotten the percentage of live coverage the last Games gave us, but it was paltry in comparison to the Olympic coverage of the 90s.
I realize the games are competiting in a different TV world and that in the age of doping, the curtain has been pulled back and replaced with guarded skepticism about atheltes making history. However, I remember people gathering for the real drama the 1980 gold medal USA hockey team created against the Russians. I remember Greg Luganis hitting his head on the platform and wondering if he would continue to compete. The great moments in Olympic history are those no one saw coming. When you overthink the coverage and therefore over produce it for TV you lose what the Games is at its core suppose to represent - The wonder of sport excelling to the greatest of its heights. That's must see TV.
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I've never been a huge fan of the Olympics...and it seems they keep piling on reasons not to watch: The proliferation of "brand name" athletes and dream teams turned me off. The screwy NBC coverage drove me away from peeking in on certain events. And now with spectre of human rights and environmental abuses looming over everything, I don't think I can even bring myself to follow the Olympics in the newspaper. It's a shame that a fine, core concept has finally been overwhelmed with geo-political/media-greed cooties.
I know it. I was upset when China was awarded the games 7 years ago, but the Chinese government has taken it to heights that make it impossible to look beyond to the atheletes and competetion. Frankly the final straw for following the Olympics in any fashion came when the American Olympic committee sat silent on Team Darfur's creator simply saying "he's a private citizen and this is a matter between the Chinese government and him". Talk about being thrown under the bus! And don't get me started on Bush being there.
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