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Closing in on the Opening Ceremonies
Sports Illustrated media columnist John Walters checks in three times a week during the Olympics with his coverage of the coverage of the Sydney Games. Welcome, fellow viewers, to the Games of the 27th Olympiad in Sydney, Australia. Or, as I like to call them, While You Were Sleeping, II. You need not be Einstein -- or, with a bow to Australian comic Yahoo Serious, Young Einstein -- to understand that for this fortnight, as far as NBC is concerned, time is relative. As you've probably figured out by now, Sydney is 15 hours ahead of the U.S.'s Eastern time zone (18 ahead of the West), which means that most events are being staged while we here in the States are blissfully asleep. NBC Olympics chairman Dick Ebersol's gambit is that it is more advantageous -- and yes, profitable -- to air the Games in prime time on tape-delay than to turn the Olympics into a second coming of MTV's "Insomniac Theater". Ebersol's decision, while fiscally pragmatic, robs viewers of one of sport's most basic tenets: the unscripted outcome. As the Games proceed, I'll be eager to see whether NBC's strategy provides too much gloss and too little drama for sports fans who, more often than not, will know the outcome of an event before they have a chance to see it. Remote PatrolAs NBC aired four hours of coverage last Friday night, ABC responded with back-to-back-to-back-to-back episodes of Whose Line is it, Anyway? Then again, that might as well have been the title of NBC's coverage, co-hosted by Bob Costas and Katie Couric. Some of their more memorable lines:
Costas, on the event's starlet, Nikki Webster, being hoisted high above the Olympic Stadium floor: "I don't know that Peter Pan ever got up that high, at least not on stage." Couric, as the Swedish delegation paraded by, asked, "Who would've thought that [25 years later] ABBA would come back?" Ironically, an hour earlier on Fox during something called Music Mania 2000, Britney Spears performed a cover of "Dancing Queen". Costas, introducing Olivia Newton-John and noting that, "she, like the Olympics themselves, owes much to Grease ." Always insightful, but as easily seduced by a witty quip as any scribe, Costas scripted that line in his hotel room nearly two weeks ago. As for commercials, Nike seems to have an affinity for portraying U.S. female track starts as damsels in distress. Last winter the Swoosh aired an ad in which Marion Jones was chased around Venice Beach. Last Friday night it was middle-distance runner Suzy Favor-Hamilton's turn. Favor-Hamilton, who appears in the ad without being identified, is surprised in her cabin by a chainsaw-wielding psychopath. She too is chased but the U.S.'s best hope in the 1,500 meters simply outruns her assailant until he is too winded to continue. Clever concept, but aren't the Olympics supposed to be family viewing? A gold medal to NBC for ... superimposing images of flags over the lanes of the pool during swimming events. The graphics are unintrusive, since they disappear once the races begin, and are an asset to viewers trying to figure out in which lane Lenny Krayzelburg, for example, will swim. A fool's gold medal to MSNBC ... which cut away in the middle of U.S. baseball player Mike Neill's dramatic at-bat to air a news update. Neill, batting in the bottom of the 13th inning of the longest baseball game in Olympic history, stroked a game-winning home run. Check back Wednesday for another installment of The Channel Guy. The opinions
expressed here are solely those of the
writer.
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