Here we are, only a few hours away from the start of the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials for Track and Field; in a rational world, I would be clearing my schedule to watch as much of the T.V. coverage as possible. Instead, I'm preparing to be disappointed yet again by NBC and it's "No Bleeping Clue" approach to the sport I love.
Am I being harsh? Let me illustrate what's wrong with NBC's coverage by telling you what I've learned from the high school kids that I coach. I should tell you that most of the kids who join the track team at CA aren't very familiar with the sport. They rarely pay attention to what other high schoolers are doing, and very few of them follow the sport at the college or professional levels.
At some point I decided that it was one of my responsibilities to remedy this situation by introducing them to the wider world of Track and Field. With that goal never far from my mind, I took to starting practices with a short video -- to share with them some of the great moments in Track and Field history. It's interesting and sometimes surprising to see their reactions. Sometimes they are totally into it, bursting into applause at the finish of a close race; sometimes they are left unmoved. Over the last couple of years, I feel like I've developed a pretty good sense of what appeals to teenagers who would never consider themselves hard core fans, and who have probably never watched a track meet on TV.
A few weeks ago I watched NBC's coverage of the 2012 Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, one of the finest track meets in the world. The next week I watched the same network cover the Adidas Meet in New York. The coverage of both meets was horrible, as usual. Truly, NBC has perfected the art of ruining a track meet for the passionate fan, and one can almost admire the thorough way they go about it.
It starts with hiring the same old mediocre talent to do the play-by-play, and letting that talent focus on a single athlete while ignoring all the others, including (often) the eventual winner. Another technique is to interrupt any race longer than four minutes for commercials and promos for other NBC programs, or simply not show the longer races at all. Dwight Stones gives a ten-second summary of the field events using clips that are usually totally devoid of drama or suspense. Finally, the whole thing is treated as merely a warmup for the Olympics. After watching for ninety minutes, I swear never to watch an NBC broadcast again, since it's blatantly an exercise in network self-promotion.
Usually, when I get angry about coverage of Track and Field and start yelling at the TV, I get no sympathy. My wife says that I'm out of touch with what normal people think, that only get-a-life runners like me care about Galen Rupp breaking 13:00 for the first time, or decathlete Ashton Eaton competing in the hurdles, or Allyson Felix needing to get out of that speed suit, for god's sake (has there been anything worse for track and field than that?)... Normal people don't care, she says, and those are the people who will be watching the Olympics. To this observation I have rarely had a coherent answer.
But now thanks to my team, I have the opinions of dozens of kids who don't obsess about runners and times, who don't know or care who won what race in Beijing or Berlin or Daegu. The kids at CA are my focus group, and I trust their responses to televised track and field more than my own. You know what they like? I'll tell you what they like.
They like close races where the runners are trying really hard and no one knows who's going to win, and everyone has a chance. They like to see tension building over the course of a race, whether it's a short race or a long one. Most of all, they love to hear the announcers get excited, REALLY excited. That's the one thing that always, ALWAYS makes a video interesting to them -- when the announcers are going nuts and screaming and acting as though what's happening on the track or in the field is the most amazing thing that's ever happened.
What makes it cool, is when the announcers lose their cool.
My kids' all-time favorite videos include Chris Solinksy (Beast Mode!) running sub-27:00 at Stanford in 2010. In that video, the Flotrack guys who are announcing the race can't believe what's happening, and their excitement and that of the crowd is electric.
The CA kids also like Billy Mills winning the 10K gold in Tokyo ("Look at Mills! Look at Mills!!). Another favorite is Dave Wottle winning the 800 gold in Munich (which has a spectacular fall at the end -- they also like to see people fall). By the way, even though I don't think Jim McKay is a brilliant broadcaster, he manages to mention most of the runners in the race by name. NBC never does that.
Compared with these gems, or virtually ANY British telecast, NBC's coverage is monotonic and monothematic, never rising to a level that could be called genuine excitement. NBC's announcers treat every race like it's just a time trial for the runners to feel good about themselves. With the exception of one or two pre-selected favorites, NBC treats most of the competitors as though they were cardboard props, and they don't bother to learn their names or their stories. Fundamentally, NBC sucks at making races seem cool. Most of their announcers don't know how to express passion (if they feel it at all). It's infuriating to watch a great race through the eyes of someone who can't be bothered to get excited about the runners in the race, and how they got there, and how they suffer, and how they triumph in the end or fail. All NBC wants to do is develop their preconceived story lines and tout some meet two weeks or two months hence. That's all that matters to them.
Before watching the Pre Classic, I was wishing I had told my kids to watch it. After watching, I'm glad I didn't risk all my credibility by telling them it would be exciting. Based on how it was called, it was about as exciting as a commercial for Geritol.
Now, with the Trials about to start, I'm preparing to be disappointed again. I have no confidence that NBC will make my viewing experience a pleasant one. It's true, I'm just a get-a-life runner, out of touch with the general Olympics-watching public. But for every one of me, there are thirty kids who would watch track if it was cool, if it had passion, and if it were presented to them by guides who got so into it that sometimes they lost their reserve, shouted, screamed, and laughed in amazement at the miraculous events unfolding in front of them.
6 comments:
As you realize Jon, it's about making money. So the coverage has to reflect the interest of the public. They would lose viewers if they covered the meets as you would like(and millions of $). The answer is for the public to become more educated about track, which won't happen given the competition from other more team oriented sports. As Gen. Eisenhower answered Gen. Patton(who had said that great generals win wars), "public opinion wins wars". And public opinion wins track coverage(and everything else).
OBE,
Yes, it's about making money, and yes, the coverage must appeal to the general public. But, as Jon pointed out, what would presumably appeal to the non-hardcore-runner public is much like what appeals to his new-to-running high-schoolers at CA. These kids aren't (to begin with) educated about professional track, but they can enjoy watching it if it's presented well.
I mean no offense, but I couldn't disagree more that the networks "would lose viewers if they covered the meets" as Jon proposes here. They scarcely have any viewers to lose as it is! The answer is not for the general public to become magically better-educated about runners and running: it's for NBC and its ilk to put some effort into creating good track broadcasts, with passionate and well-informed announcing: the idea being that even the uneducated general public, even people who've never run a step in their lives, can tune in and be absorbed by the intriguing stories and inherent excitement of track races, which get blatantly ignored in NBC's lackluster coverage/announcing.
They are never going to put the effort into presenting good track broadcasts unless they feel they will be rewarded with increased viewers in the demographic that will but the products advertised. Their judgment apparently is that their small audience would be even smaller if they aimed their broadcasts at you, Jon, and me. They aren't social workers; if what you say were true they would already be doing it because they would be making money. Unless you assume they are too stupid to know their interests.
OBE, I had no idea that you were such an "efficient market" economist (if it were a good idea, someone would already be doing it).
But never mind that. I agree that NBC is bound to act in its own (perceived) self-interest and that it has no social responsibility to do otherwise. However, you don't have to think they are stupid to imagine that they are not making the best use of their broadcasting opportunity. It's probably more accurate to say that they aren't willing to take the risk of changing what is working well enough for them (although I believe they have lost money broadcasting the Olympics, so perhaps they are "stupid" in the sense that they paid too much for the broadcasting rights...)
In any case, the point can only be proven when someone demonstrates that providing exciting coverage of T&F can lead to greater commercial success. That's why we have entrepreneurs -- to take such risks and succeed or fail with a new idea that no one has pursued before.
"Best use" is subjective. They aren't making the use of their opportunity that you and would consider "best". I think they know, better than we do, what will lead to greater commercial success. A national broadcast(NBC) can only be as good as its audience. Decades ago, before the dumbing down of the audience, broadcasts were more informatve and exciting. There use to be much more track on tv and in the media generally. The audience was more hip and the coverage reflected that. People today are more "needy". They need the lift they get from football, basketball, hockey, soccer, etc. As an individual sport track can't compete with that. People can't identify as much with individuals. So the coverage has to be aimed at other interests like personal profiles. The best coverage, of course, comes on cable where a more select and informed audience exists of viewers paying for the coverage. National broadcasts of track, like the national news broadcasts of NBC,CBS,and ABC by definition have to be aimed at their audience, which is not us.
To add to your list of races where there is actually good announcing, don't forget Bob Schul's 1964 race. I don't if that play-by-play guy is alive (my guess is no), but if we could clone him . . . I would contend his excitement exceeds the Mills race at the end. 37 last 300 in the mud.
Post a Comment