Comments on: Why Olympics coverage in the U.S. sucks

By: orioncloudysky.com

orioncloudysky.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:37:00 +0000

[...] To end this unexpected long post, here are some sites where others have protested in how the US Olympics coverage sucks: http://crookedtimber.org/2008/08/08/why-olympics-coverage-in-the-us-sucks/ http://www.esztersblog.com/2008/08/08/why-us-olympics-coverage-sucks/ [...]

By: Going for gold… : orioncloudysky.com

Going for gold… : orioncloudysky.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:28:43 +0000

By: Graham

Graham — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:19:26 +0000

Agree with your post. I actually chanced to be in Italy last week watching the games. Interestingly, there was a heck of a lot of Italians winning, but the other main set of events was basically U.S. athletes winning. The result, anyway, is that I saw U.S. basketball players on TV for the first time in many months and watched more fencing than ever before. Italians for whatever reason seem to be really good with skinny swords!

By: Mike3550

Mike3550 — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:31:17 +0000

I wish that they showed more sports that Hungary was good at — then maybe I’d actually get to see water polo (my sport growing up). Of course, since the US team has a chance this year, there is actually a decent amount of coverage, proving your point Eszter.

By: Alex H.

Alex H. — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:23:08 +0000

What that means is that sports in which the US rarely or never medals get no coverage year after year. I am not a fan of spectator sports generally, but I competed in Judo for many years, and like to watch it, even though (with perhaps one exception), it is unlikely that the US will take a medal this year or any year soon.

On the plus side, I fully expect that this is the first year I will be able to download fairly complete coverage of the Judo events as torrents recorded from broadcasts in other contries. NBC seems to have some coverage online of Judo, though you have to download Silverlight to watch them, so pfffft! (Erm, I mean “No, thank you.”)

By: Eszter Hargittai

Eszter Hargittai — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:51:07 +0000

Steph, so you actually like those human interest stories interspersed with the coverage? I guess they do have an audience for that then.:-}

Watching the Men’s 400m IM swimming is a good example of how US-focused it is. I’m not much of an expert in swimming, but the little I read about the race beforehand suggested that the Hungarian Cseh would walk away with the silver. You never would have guessed it from the commentator’s discussion of the event right beforehand. You’d think it would be worth mentioning since it would make the race more exciting to watch without assuming that Americans will walk away with both gold and silver (as they did not in the end).

By: Lara

Lara — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:03:08 +0000

I am an Olympics junkie, but I, too, typically have several rants during the course of the Olympics about American coverage. A few for the overly heavy coverage of the Americans (Eszter) and a few for the overly heavy coverage of a few sports (Katie).
In addition, I usually have at least one fit about the overly zealous endorsement some semi-expert announcer gives to an athlete. If an American announcer believes that a favored athlete has been slighted in some way, they waste my time telling me over and over why the announcer’s favorite should have won or earned more points. Again, this usually applies to American athletes, but recently the American announcers also loved a Canadian pair that I did not particularly like. I thought we all learned in sports that life (and rule enforcement) doesn’t always go the way we wish.

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:42:24 +0000

I wholeheartedly agree, and would throw this additional thought out there…US Network coverage of the Games tends to put most of the spotlight on those sports the network deems most “popular”. I understand that from a revenue perspective, but as a devoted fan of some less-popular-in-the-US sports such as rowing, field hockey and especially synchronized swimming, our best hope is to catch a brief update during primetime if that. I’m hoping that the NBC/Oxygen/online coverage this year will help those lesser-known sports get some viewers’ eyeballs on them…whether on TV or on the computer.

So, go Hungary! And hooray for the smaller sports

By: Steph

Steph — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:27:00 +0000

Sadly, I didn’t ever notice this! Thanks for pointing it out.

My favorite part of the Olympics coverage is that they always find someone who’s mother died and then they broke their back and were told they’d never walk again then they were refugees and then they are in the olympics and they win. Always makes me cry.