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Thursday, September 21
Good news from NBC: Aussies angry at TV, too
By Mark Kreidler
Special to ESPN.com
SYDNEY, Australia -- If it makes you feel better, NBC, they all want to kill their televisions down here, too.
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VIEW FROM AMERICA
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IRVINE, Calif. -- Debra Margulies knows who won the Olympic
gold medal in women's gymnastics at the Sydney Games -- "Not the
Americans."
Frances Loussararian can recite the story of Eric Moussambani,
the swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who became an unlikely hero when
it looked like he might drown during the 100-meter freestyle race.
But neither of these Southern California women saw NBC's
television coverage of the events. Rather, they got their
information from radio, local TV news and the Internet.
"Every time I turn it on, it's an interview or some story about
somebody. They don't show the events," Margulies said. "Besides,
I already know who won when it comes on. Why I am I going to watch
it for four hours?"
Around the country, many people have tuned out NBC's Olympic
coverage, putting the network on pace for the lowest-rated Summer
Games ever.
NBC's vice president of sports programming, Kevin Sullivan, said
the network is not discouraged by the numbers. He said broadcasting
from Australia is posing a unique set of problems.
"We're broadcasting the Summer Games in the fall halfway around
the world and having to contend with a 15- to 18-hour time
difference," he said. "With all the different media, the results
are not only available to people, they are almost unavoidable."
-- Associated Press
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If there is one thing that international travel makes you aware of, besides the fact that a McDonald's cheeseburger tastes exactly the same in Malaysia as it does in Milwaukee (can I get a Starbuck's tall drip with that?), it is that TV viewers are TV viewers. They share the same hopes, the same dreams, and, yes, the same ability to absolutely despise whatever's coming out of that box at any given moment.
In the United States, it appears, viewers are currently despising the fact that NBC, which ponied up more money than you can fit in a cricket stadium in order to broadcast these Games, opted to televise approximately one million billion hours of competition without showing a single second live.
In Australia, by contrast, viewers are currently despising the fact that local rights-holder Channel Seven, which is showing approximately one billion trillion hours of mostly live competition every day, still can't seem to "capture the spirit of these games or even provide the most elementary results."
So wrote columnist Paul Kelly in Thursday's editions of The Australian, and Mr. Kelly apparently is backed by the entire populace of New South Wales. They may not be able to agree on whether Ian Thorpe or Susie O'Neill is the most beloved swimmer on the continent, but get 'em on the subject of Seven and it's one big miserable family.
It appears that networks are able to let down their viewers in any number of ways. Americans, from where we sit, seem to be revolting at the notion that an entire day's worth of Olympic action could be whittled down to its dramatic essence, pre-packaged into a prime-time block and tossed out on the network. (Not strictly true: In addition to NBC's time, there is a ton of programming on CNBC and MSNBC. But still.)
Put that together with the ongoing college and pro football season and baseball's divisional races, and you have a nifty recipe for watered-down ratings. Other than rooting for some good friends at NBC, I couldn't care less, since I don't own the stock -- but it's at least conceivable that things will pick up now that we're entering the Marion Jones phase of the operation.
Down here, though, it's just a totally different kind of bile-spewage. If the Americans are turned off to the point of not caring, the Australians are flying into a rage over just about everything connected with Seven's coverage. The network is said to be too dull. Too jingoistic. Too commercial-strewn. Too drama-impaired.
And when the network let a Qantas ad run right over the start of O'Neill's 200-meter freestyle final, the lid blew off this fair land. As Suzan from Cooma wrote, "Just when we thought Seven's coverage of 'our Olympics' (whose? Australia's or Seven's?) couldn't get any worse ... it did."
You'd have thought the network had given away the name of the Survivor. Blasted left and battered right, Seven executives were said to be in "crisis talks" over its "broadcast blunders" -- this, again, according to the always-reliable Australian, which is, now that you mention it, a Rupert Murdoch paper.
Not sure what the crisis is, precisely, since Seven is pulling in something like 70 percent of the Australian prime-time audience every night it's on the air. And anyway, Seven does have on late at night the kind of funny, irreverent and deeply cynical show that just about every network ought to be legally required to air during its Olympics coverage.
It's called The Dream, wherein two gentlemen whom you've never heard of (but Aussies have) recap the day's events by essentially making fun of them for two hours. When they substitute their own voiceovers for the usual hushed commentary at something like the gymnastics -- "Roy, I believe she's going with the unusual Swing Your Partner Dosey-Do combination here" -- you know you're watching something that all your friends ought to be able to see.
Of course, if NBC had it, it'd be on tape delay. But don't worry: They all hate their network down here, too -- just for a bunch of refreshingly different reasons.
Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a Web site at http://www.sacbee.com/.
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