Sunday, September 24, 2000
Sports On TV-Radio
Olympic viewers unhappy with NBC
By John Fay
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It would be bad enough for NBC if it merely was drawing dreadful ratings for the Olympics, but according to my informal poll, the Peacock People have managed to tick off what viewers they have.
Take my friends Kim and Kym. They love the Olympics. They watch the Olympics. Kim knows the results and tapes the games anyway. Kym avoids the results and watches them live, or what NBC has passed off as live.
Neither is pleased with NBC's product.
Kim's beef is with NBC's story-telling approach to the games. You get a little about how the athlete overcame an illness, a death of a parent or some other misfortune. Then you get five minutes of said athlete's event. Followed by another story.
“I love the Olympics,” Kim said. “I watch them because it's the only way you can watch them. NBC has always done them like that, so I'm used to it.”
Used to it, not happy with it.
“NBC says that's what everyone wants,” Kim said. “But nobody I talk to likes how they do it.”
Kym is among them.
“When they go into those stories,” she said, “I'll flip to something else.”
I agree. Every time I try to watch NBC, they're force-feeding touchy-feely stories. Everything is cut into neat little segments. It's hard to maintain interest in one competition, because NBC doesn't stay with anything long enough.
Some other Olympics observations:
• The best coverage is on MSNBC and CNBC. They show events, not stories. The problem is they get none of the glamour sports. Tuesday evening, CNBC showed the 152-pound weightlifting finals. You had two lifters trading world records. It was real drama, not made-for-TV stuff.
• The choice of Andrew Cantor as the soccer play-by-play man was an awful one. You might remember Cantor from the World Cup — he is the guy who yells “GOOOOOAL!” The problem is, English is his second language. He's hard to understand, and his play-by-play consists mostly of calling out the name of the player who is kicking the ball.
• The choice of Michelle Tafoya as the play-by-play woman for softball makes the selection of Cantor look like a stroke of genius. Tafoya doesn't set the scene, doesn't put things in perspective and calls routine plays “great.” After the United States lost its third straight game, Jim Lampley, on the anchor desk, explained what it meant in five seconds. Tafoya didn't do that in 14 innings.
• Bob Costas is proving that as host, he's the best in the business. His light touch is a refreshing break from the on-site people who tend to overstate almost everything. Lampley also has been terrific.
• NBC could and should mix some live coverage with the taped stuff. Michael Johnson, Maurice Greene and Marion Jones made their 2000 Olympic debuts during prime time Thursday night. NBC, however, didn't show their races until Friday morning. That has happened dozens of times during the first week.
• Jimmy Roberts has done some of the best work on his feature packages.
• The announcers, particularly the analysts, are largely red-white-and-blue jingoists. Rowdy Gaines' call when Lenny Krayzelburg won his first swimming gold: “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
• Marv Albert and goofy Teddy Atlas are entertaining on the boxing coverage.
• Ahmad Rashad's “Around the Games” features aren't funny.
WHERE'S TRACY? Sean Casey was saying before the Reds game Friday that WLW-AM (700) talker Tracy Jones said Casey will gone in the offseason in a trade.
“Where's that coming from?” Casey said. “It would be nice if the guy showed up every once in a while.”
SOAS: Sports of All Sorts on Channel 9 will begin its new format tonight. The show will begin at 11:15 p.m. and run until midnight. It had been broadcast from 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.
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