the title of this blog was almost #NBCFail and it was challenging not to title it that... had i posted background tv entries here since the last entry, at least one would have been title NBCFail... #NBCFail has become the standard bearer internet hashtag on twitter and other places representing critical and public opinion on the atrocious production of the 2012 olympic games that nbc presented... it is so sad on so many levels...
saddest of all might be the arrogant ignorance... disrespect of nations, of races, of sports, and of athletes permeated the broadcast right from the opening ceremony to this point, less than 48 hours before the closing ceremony... the five hour time delay was a challenge to overcome, but nbc pretended it was not there at first, presenting the replay on prime time as if the events were live... nbc was obviously oblivious to the real-time world we live in now that twitter, facebook, and thousands of other websites that report on world events as they happen...
the editing out of specific moments, the jingoistic and even borderline bigoted commentary, the arrogant bias of commentators was not only unprofessional, it was insulting... luckily we've come a long was as a species for some of the comments might have been international incidents a half century or century ago... those of you who think i am overstating the offenses, i suggest you study history and look closer at the major faux-pas that nbc presented in from of more than a billion people around the world...
expert commentators did not seem to know what was going on and they were not fed interesting facts or information, they were permitted to babble and too often made mis-statements that were ridiculous and embarrassing, the women's vault comes to mind... the commercials, more than 33% of each hour, were ridiculously placed, edited into the tape delay so often they dominated the viewing experience which was not only frustrating, but insulting at times (the grinning monkey on gymnastic rings following the grinning african american gymnast comes to mind and the commentary leading up to the commercial could not have been scripted to be more racially provocative)... it was obvious that the people responsible for putting the overly edited excerpts of the days events were way over their heads and not paying attention to the presentation they were producing...
the droning ignorance got so bad i kept the olympics on without sound for most of the second week... yeah, ratings were high, but customer satisfaction and memories of insults and frustration and annoyance will last a lot longer than the days ratings...
this production may be a sign of how out of touch corporate america is...
there are thousands of links i could add here to the detailed and valid critique others have posted as they dissected the nbc coverage... but i am not going to put the time in to do that tonight... i just wanted to record that the background tv for the last two weeks, mostly, has been the worst olympic tv coverage i've ever seen and this goes back decades (1976 may still be one of the best, partly because of nadia, but the sad truth is abc did an infinitely better job of producing the olympics every time they did it without the current technology, technology that was too obviously absent from the 2012 #NBCFail broadcast...
hopefully i will not feel the need to vent any more than i already have... tv, even tv just kept on in the background for listening and sporadic viewing, should be enjoyable, not irritating... the sponsors and nbc will be remembered with frustration and avoidance for a while... sponsors are lucky we have such short memories... nbc sports, you're done for me, even on background tv...
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