Stuff we Noticed at the Olympics part 2
Maybe if they let the divers jump into the field, baseball might get some airtime.
As the Olympics draws to a close everyone else has been thinking about the spectacularly rated NBC coverage of this sports extravaganza. If you’ve been watching as much as everyone else has, you have probably seen an enormous amount of swimming, diving, gymnastics, swimming, diving, gymnastics, some volleyball, more volleyball, and a few track and field events. Of course, we know those are the only sports that are played in the Olympics, so that is fine…oh wait…what’s that you say? There are far more sports than those in the Olympics? Huh, who knew?
We understand the tension that existed between the US and Chinese gymnastics teams. That needed to be shown. Of course, there were also the highly rated US volleyball teams, and somewhere in there was some American swimmer that we hear was pretty good. But shouldn’t NBC have at least acknowledged the existence of some of the other sports?
One thing NBC has done well has been their web coverage, where you can see just about any sport being played at the games. However, before you fire up the generator and go online, most of these are filmed with the worst possible camera angles and have no vocal commentary at all, so they are kinda hard to watch sometimes.
But, their great website aside, where has their acknowledgement of the other sports been? Now granted, usually the news focuses on those sports where the US is a medal contender. But javelin and pole vaulting are not our greatest strengths, and diving certainly not.
Take this evening (Friday, August 22nd) for example. Tonight is the bronze medal baseball game between the US and Japan. Both of these are strong gold medal hopefulls. Right now both teams are tied in the 5th inning. You wouldn’t know that from the TV coverage. NBC hasn’t mentioned it on broadcast TV at all. Not even once, in fact. Instead, they have spent the evening showing a diving competition in which the United States is not a real contender, Semi-final track relays, and a brief look at the Americans faltering in the pole vault.
Why no mention of baseball? Isn’t that the national pastime? Agreed, baseball takes much longer than a quick relay, but they could at least show clips. This doesn’t seem to make much sense, but then again, not much does anymore.
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