An open letter to national television executive producers, T.V. production junkies and sports fans:
The last two weeks of my life were spent predominantly glued to the 2006 Winter Olympics from Torino Italy. It seems that every 2 years I become a slave to the television purely as a fan. I am rarely allowed that privilege anymore given what I do for a living.
Being a television producer/director and camera operator has allowed me almost unmitigated access to amateur, collegiate, and professional sporting events consistently over the last 10 years. Over this time I have covered innumerable NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL, and NCAA events. I have covered 2 NBA Finals, 3 Stanley Cup Finals, 1 Super Bowl and countless playoff games. With all of those wonderful events in my past I have never been involved with an Olympic Games. I would relish the opportunity to do so, in fact salivate, cut off pinky toe, and appear on a reality show are more appropriate actions I would shamelessly endure in order to cover an Olympics. Alas to this point in my career I have not. That brings me to where I left off, being a fan.
I can rarely marvel at the athletic prowess of a human being, or be dazzled by the “thrill of victory” or try to empathize with the “agony of defeat”. More often that not (and I am NOT complaining) I am relegated to finding the most interesting story line at any given moment. I help tell stories to people at the speed of attention deficit disorder. Occasionally there is a moment where I look back at the show I just finished with and go wow, and in a flash that memory is gone. I don’t even know the score of the game half the time. For me appreciating the purity of sports is a rare treat to only be enjoyed once every 2 years-ish.
This past two weeks I was fortunate enough to watch as much of the Olympics as the Canadian and American television networks in conjunction with my TIVO would allow me to watch. I was inundated with stories of Bode Miller and Seth Wescott and Apollo Anton Ohno and many others. I could tune in to MSNBC to watch a seemingly endless stream of Men’s and Women’s curling instead of the usual capitalist propaganda. I could be wooed by the Canadian coverage of the Women’s Super G (which is not a dirty word I might add) I could see the Italian Alps in High Definition upconverted to a standard 4:3 aspect ratio, since I don’t yet have an HD TV. NBC touted over 400 hours of Olympic coverage. CBC our neighbors to the north were kind enough to carry a similar amount.
I watched as the IOC recognized the Snowboard Half-pipe as a medal sport, and even watched the Biathlon, yes cross country skiers with guns, an event that is about as TV friendly as watching mimes read from the Quran. I can however blame the Executive producers and programming “execs” at NBC. Let’s get one thing straight, I cannot blame NBC completely for what was an otherwise lukewarm coverage of the Olympics. Aside from the Chad Hedrick/Shani Davis scandal, or the Michele Kwan premature exit from Italy they had to manufacture a lot of story lines. Even though it has some time since ABC was the broadcaster for the Olympics I became acutely aware that Jim McKay is no longer doing the Olympics. NBC did try to use Mckay as a feature story presenter at the last winter Olympics in Salt Lake in 2002. Jim Mckay is/was one of the greatest television personalities in the history of television. He would bring the enthusiasm of a man that was passionate about amateur sports and deliver it with the integrity of Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings. He has a wonderful sense of what a television personality should be. I am bothered that a generation of children will grow up being influenced by Bob Costas’ self ritous editorials to close out every broadcast. Being a studio host bears a relatively small but powerful responsibility. In the world of television the studio host is the face of the telecast like the Olympics more than any other. This responsibility is to excite the audience about what they have so generously tuned in to watch. Hearing Mckay introduce cliff diving on ABC’s Wide World of Sports was exciting to me. Hearing Bob Costas tell me that we are about to go to Oval Lingotto to see Shani Davis race the 1000m vs. Chad Hedrick should excite me as well. Bob Costas setting up a 1000m speed skating race is accompanied by a well written albeit hollow introduction to an event that is shadowed by controversy and scandal.
Personal dislikes amongst national teammates should be a side note to what is a world competition, not the central selling point or storyline. Growing up the Olympics were always presented as the competition itself and nothing more. Sure there were great story lines leading into each segment. Those story lines usually had a positive outcome, or were born from tragedy or hardship which for the athlete or coach the Olympics were an outlet or way to get away from their hardships for a while. I think Rune Arledge and the folks at ABC were the ones who got it right. We were exposed to wonderful story lines like some unknown bobsled team from Austria beat out the incumbent big Austrian team to qualify for the Olympics. Not Gunter and Deiter did not get along so they parted ways and refused to compete in the same events. Perhaps the world is a little different now, but I am more inclined to think that our American sensibilities have mutated to a lesser impression of humanity and competition.
A perfect example of that is the wildly popular CBS show “Survivor”. On a weekly basis we can see the very worst kind of human behavior manifest itself in the name of a competition. Perhaps all of the market research and focus groups have told NBC’s “executives” that Americans are more likely to watch a TV show or sporting event because there is deplorable human behavior to be witnessed rather than the most noble and passionate reasons. Yes America there you have it, tonight on Survivor – so and so will stab such and such in the back to gain headway in the competition they are involved in. Amongst all of the intolerable tripe there is to watch on television, the crown jewel of drama, comedy, action, highs, and lows are captured into one two week event, and the kind folks at NBC would rather we watched as if it were some trashy reality show. To me the Olympics is about the world coming together for a short while, curbing our political and economical problems and getting along all the while showing the world how great we can be as one and as individuals on the field of competition. It’s good that it only comes once every two years that we are given the opportunity to witness this. That way there is hope that another Rune Arledge and Jim Mckay will come along and save this country from “Survivor”.
Ok forgive me as I step down from my soap box for a moment. I suppose I am less qualified to comment on the social and political ramifications of sportsmanship as an example of the good in humanity. Oops there I go like Marlon Brando in Superman the Movie.
Enough of that and on to the stuff I am qualified to comment on. THE REALLY COOL STUFF NBC DID.
As many of you may or may not know NBC had a VERY large stake in the televising of the Olympics. They provided no less than 8 High Definition television productions trucks and countless smaller production facilities in and around Torino and the International Broadcast Center. While that does sound impressive, I think it’s even more impressive than it sounds. Starting from the beginning there was a great big ocean between the U.S. and Europe. 8 High Definition TV trucks have to cross the aforementioned ocean in a ship, or airplane or flying saucer or something. Now I am not entirely sure of the logistics of that, but all of the equipment and cables and lights, and set pieces and TV trucks (did I mention that there were 8 of them?) and cameras and tripods and tape machines and electronics and editing systems and connectors and so on…whew! All of that had to be loaded on some kind of conveyance or fleet of conveyances and be shipped to Italy from the United States, Japan, England, and many other Countries providing equipment and services just to NBC. That alone is a Herculean task. I don’t know if any of you have ever tried getting video equipment across an international border but it’s hard. There is a manifest and a carnet asset tags and an inventory (in NBC’s case that would make Best Buy look like 7-11) and people that are directly responsible for this. Each countries customs have different rules and regulations on how to properly prepare these documents.
Ok now that NBC has organized their “stuff” to get to Italy they have to start hiring a number of freelancers to go to Italy to produce these 400ish hours of television. This includes Producers, Directors, Assistant Producers, Assistant Directors, Audio Mixers, Audio Engineers, Video Engineers, Camera Operators, Video Tape Machine Operators, EVS Operators, a staff of Librarians just for the video tape, Production Managers, Operations Staff, Operations Producers, Lighting Directors, Electronics Technicians, Electronics Engineers, Video Editors, an Army of Graphics Designers, Utilities, Production Assistants, Gofers, Drivers, Translators, Animators, and so on.
All of these people fortunate enough to get hired for this event are away from home for as much as 6 weeks working from set up through tear down, and shipping the people and gear back to the U.S. and U.K. and Japan and so on.
No if that were not enough NBC has to use cutting edge technology, some that was designed specifically for the Olympics. This stuff has to be operated by people that are very good at learning quickly and operating this equipment as if they had been doing it for years. In many cases you probably saw some of this equipment manifested differently in previous sporting events. For example football fans in the United States have come to rely on the “yellow first and ten line” that is used in NFL and NCAA football games. This same technology was used at the summer games in Athens to make it look as though the lane in a swimming pool was decorated with a flag of the home nation of the swimmer assigned to that lane. This is now almost taken for granted by television viewers. SportVision a visionary company in the broadcast television industry provides this equipment. Sportvision’s patented video overlay technology has been applied to a number of summer and Winter Olympic Games events. For Speed Skating and Team Pursuit Speed Skating, Sportvision has virtually inserted the athlete’s national flag on to the ice. This technology can also be utilized in other lane orientated events like track and rowing. Virtual Imaging has also been utilized on the all Ski Jumping competitions (K90, K120 and Nordic Combine). Virtual Imagining can identify the leader’s jump distance giving the viewer a virtual ‘line to beat’. This enables the viewer to know immediately how far the next skier needs to jump to surpass the current leader. Virtual Imaging can also be used as historical data markers or event record markers. Events like Javelin and Discus, whose records and event ranks are scored purely on distance, can indicate an athlete’s prior effort or world record. Now a world record is not just a number, but a visible target the athlete is looking to better. Visit their website because its sooooo cool. I even forgive them for the glow puck. www.sportvision.com
Another recent application to sports coverage is the Cable Cam or Sky Cam. This gives a never before seen dimension to camera angles. These days a camera can be put anywhere for any application. I mean FOX network put a camera in the dirt looking up at the batter just because they could. The single coolest application of the Cable Cam was during the Ski events particularly the Ski Jumping. There was a cable cam that followed the skier from the start gate all the way to the landing in synchronous pace with the skier. This gives the viewer a never before perspective on the sport of skiing.
I think with all of this new equipment, all of these new camera angles, startling amounts of technology and human interest at hand that the Olympics should be the most compelling thing on television worldwide. Perhaps it was in other countries, but for a variety of reasons it was not in the United States. In the United States American Idol and Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives rated higher than the Olympics. Perhaps people would have been more interested had NBC not put all of their hype eggs into just Bode Miller and Michelle Kwan, it turns out there were many many story lines that were good and human. Story lines that do not result in Jerry Springer-esque drama, but ones that inspire a nation and a world. “They can be a great people kal-el, they wish to be…”
Brando would say here.
