Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

I ended up with two British commentators this afternoon, which was refreshing because they actually treated it as a sporting event instead of selling it as a three-hour long coronation of the latest batch of American bouncing Barbie dolls, starring in a commerical near you. NBC's USA vs. The Rest of The World schtick is tiresome when they already have their storyline written for them and turn the sap meter up past 11 on primetime.

If you watched NBC's coverage of the men's team gymnastics, you'd be hard-pressed to figure out who won the gold and silver, since all the coverage was on Team USA. And yes, I get that they hadn't won a medal since 2008 and Leonard from The Big Bang Theory whipped off his glasses and destroyed the pommel horse. (If you said Japan edged China by 0.5 points, you were watching CBC or saw the AP agate.)

If NBC had the Games back then, it would have edited Nadia Comenci's perfect routine at Montreal in 1976 to a quick cutaway while showing the gritty American girls finishing sixth.

Ratings. I get it. And yeah, I know primetime is going to have a decidedly American slant. But it skews the perception of what's actually happening in Paris each day. It's like NBC missing the entire forest to show a leaf on one branch (unless you have Peacock and can binge watch men's kayak slalom or team archery).

I'm not saying ABC didn't have its moments but they were just as likely to show incredible performances by star athletes from other countries as focus solely on Americans. We know the names Jean-Claude Killy, Franz Klammer, Olga Korbut, Nadia Comaneci, Teofilo Stevenson and on and on because they showed the Olympics from a world perspective.

ABC did more storytelling and sports coverage with way less time and resources. OK, Boomer.

 

Good gracious.

 

The replay made it seem like the USA was in the lead all night and just didn’t need to fall on their face to win.

 

The athletes today are incredible, but for my money the cutest/most adorable floor exercise belongs to Korbut. And the music was just perfect for it. This 11-year-old was forever captivated during those few days.

 

I noticed even the gymnasts (almost wrote scholar-athletes) waited a very long time for the scores to be posted. But yeah, the lack of real-time graphics showing some sort of team scoring as it happened was surprisingly lacking for having 2024 technology.

If it wasn't for the Brazilians and Italians running around in the backgrounds with their flags, I still wouldn't know they won medals.

 

It would be interesting to see an "international feed" - I realize a good 70 percent of what we see on NBC and their platforms is from the international feed, but I also figure there is a "studio show" etc, that is avb to the countries that don't have their own Olympic broadcasting network. Just focus on the top events and the top performers regardless where they are.

Maybe Peacock can AI Jim McKay for that version with plenty of features on French stuff and interesting international athletes, like they're doing for Al Michaels recaps. (those are creepy, but a great way to enjoy the Games if you don't have a lot of time to waste,)

Also - I don't watch much, but does NBC feature US athletes competing for other nations? Or just people wearing the TeamUSA gear?

 

Name any bad gymnastics announcer you want and I'll go all-in with John Tesh.

 

The gymnastics commentary decision was so bizarre to my wife and I. What was the point? If they wanted to offer two different presentations, I think they really mixed up the "better" fit for each one. Laurie Hernandez was completely in the bag for Team USA and not really offering much commentary. I generally like Peszek on commentary, but she would have been much more suited for the "early" broadcast, when more diehards were watching. I'm also not sure if they advertised that there would be two different presentations, although we could have missed them saying that at some point.