We’re off to a tremendous start here. NBC’s assessment of American attention spans – which is probably accurate and backed up by hideous amounts of actual study that I don’t want to even know about – appears to have reached the conclusion that a 90-second luge run exceeds the attention span of a typical American by a good 60 seconds.
Either that, or luge runners are hitting the 1-minute mark two seconds after launching from the chute. And let me tell you, that’s not easy.
American Olympic coverage has always been the embarrassment of the world. In some civilized countries, they actually show the events, even events their nation isn’t expected to medal in, and they don’t cut away to commercials every seven minutes. (But that’s crazy talk, I know, and there I go being a socialist again.) Anyway, it’s been so unbearable that I’ve really hardly been able to stomach watching it since 1980, so I don’t know if it’s really getting worse or not. But I suspect it is.
Anyway, on behalf of my nation, I apologize to anyone outside the U.S. who is somehow stuck with the U.S. feed.
I don’t mind the commercials; it’s the assumption that we Americans can care about the games only if we watch lengthy, touchy-feely biographies about the athletes involved.
I realized last night that my specific critique of the lugs runs here was in error: the clocks were showing accumulated times over several runs, so they were starting at higher numbers than zero. However, they’ve done things like that before, and so I do pretty much expect, assume, and receive the worst.
Watch the first 5-10 minutes of the first round of anything and you’ll get the impression that only Americans are competing. Until most of them are eliminated and they’re forced to show the people who are actually winning.
Last night they were interviewing the lady who won the first U.S. gold, while there were THINGS ACTUALLY HAPPENING OUT THERE. I guess most people think that is the proper arrangement.
Up here near the Canadian border, we can watch the Olympics on CTV over local cable. Although of course they focus on Canadian athletes and the announcers do root for them during events, there are fewer schmaltzy mini-biographies, they put the camera on the action during events (imagine!) and they show everyone in competition, not just Canadians. They also showed the entire opening ceremony live, while NBC ignored most of it in favor of other stuff. We actually watched the China Olympics on Canadian TV as well – coverage was just better, and less hype-y, than the US coverage. (Maybe someday CSPAN will get the nod to do Olympics coverage for the US, and we can actually enjoy the Olympics as a sporting event and not a ‘We’ Movie of the Week.)