What the hell is wrong with NBC's gymnastics coverage?
Well, I'll tell you:
1. Tim Daggett is being an ass. Not that I want someone who doesn't recognize the errors in a routine, but the man is just mean-spirited. It would help if he actually explained the differences between various difficulties of routines, instead of saying stuff like, "Well, that's not going to be good enough."
2. He needs a spoiler alert. Last night during the women's team competition, they cut away for some swimming, which is totally fine. When we came back, the guy says something like, "When we left China was up by a point. But at the balance beam, it all started going horribly wrong. Let's see what happened." Um, I think I can guess that someone fell off. Probably would have been more exciting if they had just showed the routine rather than giving it away.
3. I don't see why the US women should be so horrified with getting silver. The Chinese were a formidable team on their home turf with the home crowd. The US was injured. So why are the commentators acting like a building just fell on them? (This gets to the heart of what is wrong with the Olympics: jingoism and entitlement. The idea that America should win EVERYTHING. I much prefer Morgan Freeman's VISA commercial which states that we cheer for people not because of the country they come from, but because we are human and they are human. Damn right, Morgan!)
4. Do we really not need to see anything from the other teams? Was there no other performance that was particularly gripping and worthy of our attention? Instead, we get to see the Chinese and US warm up, get to see them chalk their hands, get to see them stand around and wait for scores. Get to see them march from apparatus to apparatus. C'mon: a vault takes 12 seconds. Show us a couple of those while we're waiting. Romania won the bronze. We saw a grand total of 1 of their performances.
On the other side: what is right?
Raj Bhavsar. I loves me some Indian Americans!
1. Tim Daggett is being an ass. Not that I want someone who doesn't recognize the errors in a routine, but the man is just mean-spirited. It would help if he actually explained the differences between various difficulties of routines, instead of saying stuff like, "Well, that's not going to be good enough."
2. He needs a spoiler alert. Last night during the women's team competition, they cut away for some swimming, which is totally fine. When we came back, the guy says something like, "When we left China was up by a point. But at the balance beam, it all started going horribly wrong. Let's see what happened." Um, I think I can guess that someone fell off. Probably would have been more exciting if they had just showed the routine rather than giving it away.
3. I don't see why the US women should be so horrified with getting silver. The Chinese were a formidable team on their home turf with the home crowd. The US was injured. So why are the commentators acting like a building just fell on them? (This gets to the heart of what is wrong with the Olympics: jingoism and entitlement. The idea that America should win EVERYTHING. I much prefer Morgan Freeman's VISA commercial which states that we cheer for people not because of the country they come from, but because we are human and they are human. Damn right, Morgan!)
4. Do we really not need to see anything from the other teams? Was there no other performance that was particularly gripping and worthy of our attention? Instead, we get to see the Chinese and US warm up, get to see them chalk their hands, get to see them stand around and wait for scores. Get to see them march from apparatus to apparatus. C'mon: a vault takes 12 seconds. Show us a couple of those while we're waiting. Romania won the bronze. We saw a grand total of 1 of their performances.
On the other side: what is right?
Raj Bhavsar. I loves me some Indian Americans!
Labels: junk
posted by Courtney at 12:21 PM
5 Comments:
I agree that the gymnastics coverage SUCKS!!! When I lived in michigan I would watch the CBC so that I could actually watch the olympics. For that matter give me the BBC for news. Russia and Georgia were in a war, but our newscasts lead with the Edwards affair. Give me a break. Back to gymnastics. First, I watch gymnastics every 4 years...please explain somethings. Second, in the interest of building excitement they don't bother with the truth...kind of like the bush whitehouse. In the mens all-around they kept building that the men had a 1.5 pt lead over the Japanese. However, they might have mentioned that the Japanese had a 4 pt edge in degree of difficulty on the last apparatus so in reality the Japanese were going to need a big mistake to not jump over us.
They should be replaced!!! End of rant:)
Same thing here in Washington - everyone watches CBC instead. And a lot of it is live coverage.
And it's about the moment that is happening right then - no mini-docu-melodramas.
My TV is broken. Apparently it is important to the universe that my children develop no grandiose dreams of being gymnasts or high divers.
SIGH.
The real bummer is I bought one of those dance-ribbons for my 4 year old's birthday, expecting she would be all fired up about it. Now, it's cool because it's a rainbow--but there is no awareness of the _potential_ in this ribbon-on-a-stick! (Double sigh!)
I guess if the coverage is that obnoxious, I won't mourn too much, though ;). Thanks for the update.
could not agree more.
i have a friend who complains of the same things and i, for one, would have liked to have seen something of the australian team, more of the russians (except for that little cute girl), the romanians, the japanese and even the koreans.
i mean, isn't the best thing about the olympics seeing the countries you totally don't expect to see perform? i used to love that! i want more unlikely teams!
and when are they going to get rid of music during women's floor routines? since when do female athletes need to be 'cute' to be good?
welcome, ding! Yep, I read yer stuff over at Bitch (yay!) and would agree with your analysis, also. Guess there's lots wrong with the coverage.
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