By David Cohen
Let's set aside our cynical views of various state-supported athletes, Dream Team hype and multi-millionaire giants whining about Atlanta's accommodations, and talk about NBC's utterly disastrous and pathetic coverage of the 1996 Olympic Games.
Perhaps the Greek-derived word "pathetic" is not the right choice of words. The network's television coverage did not arouse my pity or sorrow, but instead made me angry.
NBC covered no Olympic ping-pong, almost no soccer, scant U.S. women's softball, little bits of men's baseball and virtually ignored Cuba and Japan fighting for the baseball gold medal. Heaven forbid we Americans get to watch another country compete for gold!
This was the NBC cut-and-paste Olympic Games. On top of these indignities, viewers were subjected to the maudlin, time-consuming "tragic athlete's life" vignettes that made us long for the real thing. And I don't mean Coca-Cola's ubiquitous presence. We even had to revisit 1992 Olympic diver Greg Louganis's battle with HIV, repeatedly being subjected to footage of his head-banging injury. All this at the expense of missing wonderfully current competitions.
Every night, we got to watch gymnastics, track and our professional-turned-amateur basketball team. NBC must have conducted market research that found the silent majority would stay tuned for these sports and almost anything else labeled "Olympic coverage." OK, gymnastics is fun to watch, but did we need it every night at the expense of every other sport? Don't we get to see enough basketball on ESPN2?
NBC didn't even have the smarts to allow us to watch the U.S. women win the gold medal in soccer. Arguably, it was one of the hottest tickets in town. I arrived in Athens, Ga., the site of the men's and women's soccer competition on Saturday, ready for the bronze medal competition, and all anyone could talk about was how spectacular it was to watch the U.S. women win the gold.
Cynics waxed patriotic and eyes filled with emotion as hardened newspaper types spoke of the women's moment of gold. I called home to see if anyone had watched the women's game, and all I heard was the usual gripes and grumbling about the NBC coverage. Another audacious cut-and-paste job.
Being at the Olympics was much better, I found out, than watching what some NBC studio prime-time chief thinks is what will get his "sports monopoly" the ratings it needs to turn two weeks into a profit center. NBC is lucky the American people are patriotic enough to watch despite the lousy coverage. Spotty coverage must be cheaper than a well-thought-out, more diverse showing. How else do you explain John Tesh?
I know, some of you will say it's a big job to cover the Olympics, and it must be tough to broadcast everything, but still I think the programming could have been more diverse.
Even in oppressive heat and humidity, the quaint, fun college town of Athens was the place to be. The almost-all-night parties on the streets and in the music clubs and restaurants lent this international event the spirit it needed. The Olympics have a way of making the most hardened cynics wonderfully patriotic. It is nationalism at its best. In a way, the Olympics represent the way most human beings want the world to work. That spirit permeated Athens and Atlanta.
The Brazilian soccer team pummeled the Portuguese 5-1 for the bronze medal and then quickly left town because anything less than gold for Team Brasil is considered a humiliation. It was left to soccer superpower Argentina and underdog Nigeria to compete for the silver and gold. The Argentineans and their fans were loud and cocky and seemed to encourage many fans to throw their support to the gentle-souled Nigerians.
The Nigerians were decked out in traditional attire, with talking drums beating out the magic spirit that lifted the Nigerians days before over the Brazilian powerhouse. That come-from-behind spirit allowed the team to repeat the same derring-do in Saturday's gold-medal duel. As boring as the bronze-medal game was, the gold-medal fight was what the Olympic Games are supposed to be about. Because the game was hard fought and exciting right down to the last minute, it made my trek to Georgia worthwhile.
As the clock ticked off the final seconds the Nigerian fans, clustered in front of us, began revving up and their jubilation was contagious. The Nigerians were the first African team to ever win an international soccer competition. The drums pounded out their pride and the trumpets hit every note in time. People danced, chanted and cheered when the Nigerian soccer team, in single file, began dancing African-style to the rhythms of the cheering fans. My only regret was that no one at home could share my experience because it wasn't shown on television.
No doubt the Olympic spirit is contagious, even if caught on the tube in tape delay. The extraordinary efforts of the world's best athletes definitely overshadows all the tragedies, limitations and hype of edited competitions. Even the children singing at the closing ceremonies were moving and left me looking forward to the next Olympics. Somehow they bring hope to our troubled world.
See you in Sydney.
David Cohen is publisher of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, August 28, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved