Friday, August 3, 2012

NBC's Olympic coverage and the advertising industry




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For me the NBC Olympic coverage has been a disgrace. Why?

It seems as if the sponsors of the athletes took over the broadcasting. Here is their screenplay.
1. Show the face of our sponsored guys until nosebleed! If they come in first during the competition, preferably don't show the second, and definitely forget about the third, etc. 
2. Have close-up of how our guy/girl walks, gestures, or spits (seriously!). 
3. Show medium shots of their relatives and friends.
4. When available, include long shots of their towns rooting for them. 
5. Inform the viewers of our winner's (second, third, or fourth place runner-ups) about their grandparents, high school teacher, and ex-lovers. - Just to increase the name recognition associated with our product that they advertise. 

In the meantime, the Olympics has its own great life, dramas, competitions in various sports we're not even aware of, successes, and failures; all unbeknown to the US public. Even if it involves the "less sponsored" American athletes, like the US archers who got silver in the team competition: how many of us know about this silver medal, or the names of those who won it? 
Now, if you're a foreigner, good luck even just showing your face on NBC's exclusive Olympic coverage!
In summary, the Olympic coverage is yet another example how big money curtails our freedom without most of us even noticing it: in this case freedom of selecting what we watch from the Olympics. We are stuck with NBC's unbalanced and irrelevant coverage that falls desperately short of the Olympic Spirit which is celebrating fair competition and all those who participate in it.

PS: According to today's news - question: is it really newsworthy? -, the face of Gabby Douglas, the gold medalist in combined women's gymnastics (congratulation Gabby!) already appeared on one of the cereal boxes.

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