From: htr@world.std.com (Helena T Robinson)
Subject: Re: NBC Olympic coverage ...
Summary: Some intial observations
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 16:17:52 GMT

In article <1651@hsdndev.UUCP> nhmas@gauss.med.harvard.edu (Mark Shneyder 432-4219) writes (in part):
>In article <1992Jul24.150250.411@u.washington.edu> sieferme@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Sieferman) writes:
>>If the NBC coverage of the opening ceremonies is as bad as
>>CBS' coverage of the opening of the Winter Olympics, you
>>won't get to see much.
>
>If you didn't mind the frequency of the ads, the coverage was 1st rate.
>I think NBC has learned since they covered Seoul in '88.(remember, they
>haven't covered any kind of Olympics since God know when and with Bryant
>Gumbel being a real TV hog,it didn't leave a good impression. At least,
>Bob Costas knows SOMETHING about sports). Their preview show on Friday,
>which I taped and watched on a Saturday morning, was very smooth.

I seemed to have timed my operations well  ;-)  Spent the latter part of the 
Winter Games in the hospital,  and now I'm stuck on disability till after the 
Summer Games end.  Since it took so long to catch up with all the postings 
critical of the Albertville coverage that it was too late for me to add 
anything worthwhile, this post will include some of the comments about CBS I 
couldn't post earlier.

First, I wish we could've ordered just one channel of Triplecast (3cast) - most 
of the stuff I'm really interested in seeing is on the White channel.  I'm 
sure I'm not alone.  

After seeing the Opening Ceremonies, I kinda wished they'd been available on 
3cast - no commercials, probably would've had a better feel for the ceremony 
itself.  However, NBC did a much better job than in Seoul (wonder if there's 
some kind of poetic justice in having Gumbel spending this Olympics scouting 
Today Show stories in Africa?), and better than CBS did in February.  However, 
there were several instances where I kept saying to myself "ABC would've done 
this...told us that..." with respect to some of the minutae that adds something 
to the coverage for me (albeit of little or no interest to "sports only" 
fans):  Where was the close-up of the archer? Who was operating (?!?) the 
Hercules?  How about a shot of the arrow's landing?  Who designed some of those 
wild outfits?

Spent most of Sunday morn watching gymnastics on 3cast - actually liked it!
Here's why I've enjoyed it thus far:
- It's the world feed.  You get to see what (probably) most of the world sees,
  even if it means not seeing the Americans immediately.
- You get a feel for an entire event; especially evident in gymnastics.  NBC 
  made no mention of the subdivisions in the rotations, and how this can affect 
  strategy for the individual teams.  You also got to see almost every 
  competitor, no matter how good/bad.  And yes, you could also get very sick of 
  Pagannini's music (used in floor ex)...
- Good commentators (so far): Peter Vidmar, Julienne McNamara and Wendy 
  Hilliard in gymnastics; Cynthia Potter in diving (imho perhaps the best)

As for NBC...
- Big improvement over CBS because (imho) the anchor jobs are (mostly) being 
  handled by the SPORTS dept.  I always felt CBS' best coverage in Feb. was the 
  weekend afternoons (Andrea Joyce/Jim Nantz).
- So far, NBC's features aren't being misplaced too badly; combatting another 
  major criticism I had with CBS (its Sun. highlight show on the last day was 
  worthless)
- While I liked NBC's efforts to start with "action" as soon as they can once
  they're on the air, this didn't happen this morning.  No action till nearly 
  7:45 EDT.  As a result, things didn't look much different than CBS'. 

Enough for one post - more to come!
Helena Robinson
htr@world.std.com