Every four years brings the revival of a great American tradition.
And I don’t mean the election of a new president either. I’m talking about that other great American pastime: whining and complaining about the Olympics on NBC with no thought given to how miraculous the whole thing is and how lucky we all are to be on the receiving end of NBC’s efforts.
I don’t disagree with the criticism. Sure, NBC deserves to get its knuckles rapped when it slaps a “live” label on events that are aired on tape. That was happening a lot last week, mostly bedeviling viewers in West Coast time zones.
It’s a black-and-white issue: An event cannot be live if it is on tape. I am sure even NBC understands this simple concept. And the solution is just as simple: Just don’t do it.
Perhaps NBC is afraid some viewers will be driven off when they discover certain events are not live. If that’s the case, then so be it. Those viewers are likely in the minority.
The vast majority of us are not surfing the Internet trying to learn the results of swimming races in advance of the telecasts just so we can crab about NBC airing those same events on tape. Most of us choose to watch the Olympics in our own “real” time, which happens to be during prime-time hours without particular regard to whether the events we’re watching are live or taped.
In addition, people who watch the Olympics for the sole purpose of pouncing on the network over the slightest infractions are robbing themselves of an opportunity to actually enjoy the telecasts.
Here’s a truism about sports telecasts in general and the Olympics in particular: More than any other kind of television, these broadcasts represent the state of the art of television technology.
Not only is NBC transmitting 3,600 hours of Olympic events to the United States at all hours of the day from a country half-way around the world, but some of the new camera positions, and the cameras themselves, are producing the finest, clearest pictures of Olympic competition that have ever been broadcast.
When submerged cameras are capturing crystal-clear pictures from underneath Olympic swimmers, or bringing all the way from China perfect overhead shots of gymnasts on parallel bars, then that’s a thrill to behold, tape or no tape.