Another Olympic rant

I know that I am seeing this through the lens of my own bias.  Still, it seems to me that when I was young there were fewer commercials.  Quality of coverage aside there just seemed to be fewer breaks.  I know that even in the days of my youth when I liked the coverage the network was trying to make a profit, but honestly, they just didn’t seem to have as many commercials. 

Some time in the 80s it all seemed to change from wanting to show the Olympics to wanting to produce an event.  Personally I think when a different network got to cover the Games they tried to show that they could do it better than ABC and to them better meant flashier.  Money is also a problem.  Of course the whole point of a TV network is profit, just like any corporation.  That’s fine.  I’m not complaining about that – except where it damages the product.  Namely the TV show.

I’d also lay some of blame on the Olympic Committee as well as the network.  I have no evidence but it seems to be less the Olympics these days and more The Olympics ™©®$$$$.  And naturally when you have to bid outrageous amounts to get the TV rights you have to make up the money to show a profit.  So there are more commercials because you can only charge so much per minute.

But since there are only so many natural places for a commercial break you have to manufacture them.  You edit and cut out parts of the events; show most of the US and only a few of the other countries’ athletes; take a break in the middle of a match and come back after a few goals have been scored; cut out the parts you think are boring.  After all, real or perceived, you have to cater to the American short attention span and what better way than to make it all one big highlight reel where more commercials can be squeezed in.

Actually, to me it feels more like a lot of commercials with a few sporting events squeezed in.

You can edit for time, cut and paste parts of events to fit your artificial narrative and show things out of sequence and modified for whatever reason.  But you lose the spontaneity and the progression of events that builds the tension and leads naturally to the climax at the end.  There is no end because you have no idea what happened when because it’s all out of order.  There’s more flash and less substance.

Rather than being compelling it’s disorienting.

Maybe I’m being too critical.  It isn’t possible to show everything when so much happens at the same time and watching the Olympics in real time can be tedious and boring.  It’s the nature of an event like that where there is so much going on concurrently but there is also so much down time and repetition. 

I’ll relent.  It’s an overwhelming spectacle that needs to be managed to make it comprehensible.   Maybe the experience can be improved with judicious editing.

Except that isn’t what’s going on here.  The editing is choppy.  And it’s so obvious that someone who likes to look at the women gymnasts – not competing, just look at them – produced this thing it isn’t even funny.  You get more shots from the profiles than of competition.  They have a theme song for crying out loud.

So edit, but do it better.  What we’re getting now is crap.