Thursday, August 12, 2004
Falling Flat on Seven Channels
The Athens Olympics have already begun, sort of, with some women's soccer games yesterday and today. The games get going for real tomorrow with the opening ceremonies.
I used to be a serious Olympics fan. Lots of people used to be, apparently--this Olympiad is being greeted with the largest collective yawn I can remember. In the Los Angeles Times today, Max Boot says part of the problem with the Olympics now is that since the fall of the Soviet Union, Americans have nobody to root against--no Russian or East German superathletes, injected with god-knows-what, glowering at the starting line or the diving board, preparing to do battle with somebody's clean-cut kid from Tampa or Toledo, who stands for democracy, hard work, and putting nothing in your body stronger than aspirin. Oh, there are still drug-injected superathletes, but a lot of them seem to be Americans now--no matter what happens in, for example, track and field, the shadow of steroid abuse is going to hang over it. And the kid from Tampa or Toledo who gets all the TV face time is likely to be a millionaire professional basketball or tennis player.
Even if you don't care one whit, the Olympics are going to be inescapable for the next two weeks, as NBC deploys seven channels in its corporate family to carry the games. This means a lot of events will be seen, and they will be seen live. This will be a big switch from Australia in 2000, when the time difference had NBC tape-delaying events for nearly 24 hours so they could be seen in American primetime, and from other recent Summer Olympics, when most of the events were ignored so the broadcasters could focus on basketball and gymnastics.
There will still be far too great a focus on the men's basketball team, made up of NBA pros. Although it will be spun as a massive upset if the United States doesn't win the gold, don't be surprised. The world has mostly caught up to American basketball players, and there's little sense of commitment on the part of Team USA. But even if our men's basketball team goes out ignominiously, it's a foregone conclusion that the United States will "win" the medal count. And also that some tiny female gymnast will be crowned "America's Sweetheart," and that fully half of the American team members overcame some sort of telegenic adversity to reach the games and merit a soft-focus "up close and personal" TV profile.
In one way, however, everybody will be keeping one eye on the Olympics--waiting for a terrorist act. Apart from the bribery scandals, the Salt Lake City games went off without a hitch in 2002, but that was here. It's widely expected that logistically, the Athens games will be thick with debacle. Greece was given the 2004 games after being snubbed for the 1996 Centennial games, but having nearly 10 years to plan for them hasn't seemed to matter. Venues were completed with only weeks to spare, Athens has been plagued by power outages--if it weren't for bad luck, they wouldn't have any at all. Add to that the fact that the Greek government hasn't shown it can protect its own citizens from its own homegrown terrorists, let alone protect the world's athletes from more sophisticated groups. Other countries, including the United States, have provided soldiers and security--but in the end, a terrorist attack on these Olympics, while shocking, wouldn't be a surprise.
So thousands of tickets are unsold. TV will cover the events to the point of overkill, but the ratings will be historically low. There will be great controversy over how much American athletes should celebrate victories, given that most of the world hates our guts. And the saddest thing is this: Some kid from Tampa or Toledo is going to make history, and it's going to get lost because he or she had the misfortune to make it in an era when the Olympics no longer matters.
Recommended Reading: Molly Ivins goes to Canada and finds that they think we're out of our minds, but they're too polite to say it so bluntly.
Al Qaeda wants to contaminate prescription drugs! The horror! It's only a coincidence that we're announcing this on the day we get sued to permit importation of Canadian drugs! Honest! Christ, these morons aren't even trying to be subtle anymore.
You heard Bush suggest last week that the administration misnamed the war on terror and should have called it "the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world"? The Village Voice has some alternate names for other administration initiatives.
Note to All: This entry is as long as it is because I'm trying to get blogging out of my system before taking a few days off. If this isn't enough, there are a couple of new things over at The Hits Just Keep On Comin', but apart from that, you're on your own. Some late-breaking atrocity could spark a post later tonight, but otherwise, I'll be away until Tuesday.
The Athens Olympics have already begun, sort of, with some women's soccer games yesterday and today. The games get going for real tomorrow with the opening ceremonies.
I used to be a serious Olympics fan. Lots of people used to be, apparently--this Olympiad is being greeted with the largest collective yawn I can remember. In the Los Angeles Times today, Max Boot says part of the problem with the Olympics now is that since the fall of the Soviet Union, Americans have nobody to root against--no Russian or East German superathletes, injected with god-knows-what, glowering at the starting line or the diving board, preparing to do battle with somebody's clean-cut kid from Tampa or Toledo, who stands for democracy, hard work, and putting nothing in your body stronger than aspirin. Oh, there are still drug-injected superathletes, but a lot of them seem to be Americans now--no matter what happens in, for example, track and field, the shadow of steroid abuse is going to hang over it. And the kid from Tampa or Toledo who gets all the TV face time is likely to be a millionaire professional basketball or tennis player.
Even if you don't care one whit, the Olympics are going to be inescapable for the next two weeks, as NBC deploys seven channels in its corporate family to carry the games. This means a lot of events will be seen, and they will be seen live. This will be a big switch from Australia in 2000, when the time difference had NBC tape-delaying events for nearly 24 hours so they could be seen in American primetime, and from other recent Summer Olympics, when most of the events were ignored so the broadcasters could focus on basketball and gymnastics.
There will still be far too great a focus on the men's basketball team, made up of NBA pros. Although it will be spun as a massive upset if the United States doesn't win the gold, don't be surprised. The world has mostly caught up to American basketball players, and there's little sense of commitment on the part of Team USA. But even if our men's basketball team goes out ignominiously, it's a foregone conclusion that the United States will "win" the medal count. And also that some tiny female gymnast will be crowned "America's Sweetheart," and that fully half of the American team members overcame some sort of telegenic adversity to reach the games and merit a soft-focus "up close and personal" TV profile.
In one way, however, everybody will be keeping one eye on the Olympics--waiting for a terrorist act. Apart from the bribery scandals, the Salt Lake City games went off without a hitch in 2002, but that was here. It's widely expected that logistically, the Athens games will be thick with debacle. Greece was given the 2004 games after being snubbed for the 1996 Centennial games, but having nearly 10 years to plan for them hasn't seemed to matter. Venues were completed with only weeks to spare, Athens has been plagued by power outages--if it weren't for bad luck, they wouldn't have any at all. Add to that the fact that the Greek government hasn't shown it can protect its own citizens from its own homegrown terrorists, let alone protect the world's athletes from more sophisticated groups. Other countries, including the United States, have provided soldiers and security--but in the end, a terrorist attack on these Olympics, while shocking, wouldn't be a surprise.
So thousands of tickets are unsold. TV will cover the events to the point of overkill, but the ratings will be historically low. There will be great controversy over how much American athletes should celebrate victories, given that most of the world hates our guts. And the saddest thing is this: Some kid from Tampa or Toledo is going to make history, and it's going to get lost because he or she had the misfortune to make it in an era when the Olympics no longer matters.
Recommended Reading: Molly Ivins goes to Canada and finds that they think we're out of our minds, but they're too polite to say it so bluntly.
Al Qaeda wants to contaminate prescription drugs! The horror! It's only a coincidence that we're announcing this on the day we get sued to permit importation of Canadian drugs! Honest! Christ, these morons aren't even trying to be subtle anymore.
You heard Bush suggest last week that the administration misnamed the war on terror and should have called it "the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world"? The Village Voice has some alternate names for other administration initiatives.
Note to All: This entry is as long as it is because I'm trying to get blogging out of my system before taking a few days off. If this isn't enough, there are a couple of new things over at The Hits Just Keep On Comin', but apart from that, you're on your own. Some late-breaking atrocity could spark a post later tonight, but otherwise, I'll be away until Tuesday.
