Olympic Couch Complaints

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

After a week and a half of the Athens Games, I’m suffering a Greek-god complex. Bountiful offerings lie at my feet. I have six channels of Olympic action to toggle between. I have underwater and aerial views – now in HDTV – as if shot by Hermes and Poseidon themselves. And with results posted online long before they’re aired, I’m more or less omniscient. Can the view from Mount Olympus be better than this?


Probably not. But the gods are angry with these Games. Apathy on the part of the Greeks is understandable enough; they’ve run well over budget putting on an Olympics that doesn’t even include their top athletes. But what of our own? There’s no dearth of exciting American contenders, no lack of standout performances, yet we’re all a little bored.


The Olympics are a special case in sports, one with its own unique challenges. We build relationships with our pro sports teams and their athletes, watching them week in and week out, living the ups and downs of the season. We even follow the off-season draft picks and horse-trading with the same interest. It’s a relationship forged over years of attentive engagement.


We have no such bond to the Olympics. They happen only every four years, so each time we have to acquaint ourselves with an unfamiliar group of athletes and try to get our heads around new and baffling events – when did trampoline become an Olympic sport anyway? – often decided by opaque, even corrupt scoring mechanisms.


All of this makes for a difficult relationship between sport and fan, one NBC has bungled badly. Though ratings are up about 10% from Sydney, I find the experience of watching less rewarding. In its own quest for advertising gold, NBC holds over the big-ticket events (gymnastics, swimming, track & field, beach volleyball) for prime time. With the results available online long before the events are aired, the coverage lacks any real drama.


Even if you scrupulously avoid the results on the Internet or the radio, NBC’s prime-time coverage tips you off almost immediately as to the outcome. As in a reality show, the camera only seems to find those people that are going to stick around awhile – in this case, long enough to mouth the words to their national anthem. This is especially true in the early rounds of elimination events like diving or whitewater kayak. Is it any wonder the Aussies and Chinese women won platform diving? After all, they seemed to dive three times as often as their competitors.


In its effort to fit everything in, NBC has also compressed the prime-time events into little action-packed capsules. The space between athletes is excised, as are lulls in the action. The result is that we never experience the natural rhythm and flow of a sport, and we lose the tension and anticipation that makes, say, a baseball game or soccer match so rewarding. It’s like watching Sports Center, only without the jokes.


In trying to comprehend this disorienting spectacle, we’ve had to do without an important viewer tool: the minibiopics. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of the NBC programming department, a decision was made this year to do away with the sappy, soft-focus profiles that slowed the action and sped the tears in former games. (The “Chevrolet Olympic Moments” segments are a notable exception.)


Friends have applauded this year’s coverage as the least saccharine in years, but I can’t help feeling something is missing. Yes, they were maudlin and overlong, but somewhere between the swooning strings and the baby-photo montages we developed a genuine attachment to the athletes, and found a context for their striving. The compact 15-second highlight reels that have replaced them this year just don’t do the trick. Like bad dating videos, their subjects appear only skin deep.


On top of all this, we’ve had to make do without the one universal in televised sports: the crowds. Empty seats have been an embarrassment for the hosts, but they also affect our viewing experience at home.


The crowds serve an important, yet subtle function: They’re the Olympic version of the sitcom laugh-track, a barometer of emotional intensity. While commentators tell us what to think, the crowds tell us how to feel. Without them, we don’t know how to react to – or recognize, in many cases- a particularly deft fencing thrust or a well-executed rhythmic gymnastic routine. We’re emotionally adrift.


But NBC isn’t the only one damping down the emotion. American athletes – the focus of NBC’s coverage, naturally – have been uncharacteristically subdued. A conspicuous example last week was Lebron James’s stifling a post-alleyoop strut in the game against Australia. This Dream Team has too little to celebrate to let such opportunities go by.


They’re only doing as they’re told, of course. Like a sportsmanship finishing school, U.S. athletes were instructed how properly to celebrate (answer: discreetly).So they’ve bottled it up and toned it down. But if our athletes can’t even get excited about the Games, can we be expected to?


I, for one, will take my Olympians like their namesake deities: proud and vengeful. I like to see Carolina Kluft of Sweden leading the crowd in a cheer for herself before the high jump. I want to watch Gary Hall Jr. dressed like Apollo Creed kissing his biceps on the pool deck. I’ll even take Svetlana Khorkina, the cruel, lanky Russian goddess among the gymnastic Lilliputians, frowning and sticking out her tongue at bad scores. It’s only in these moments of elation and contempt that we realize how much is at stake. As Hall puts it, “defiance is fun.”


It’s an unfortunate limit to our godly powers that we can’t toss a bolt from the heavens and change the coverage or nature of these Olympic Games. Instead, we’re left to contemplate a lesser power: the ability to change the channel.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use