JERRY: Well, uh, maybe something happens on the way to work.
GEORGE: No, no, no. Nothing happens.
JERRY: Well, something happens.
RUSSELL: Well, why am I watching it?
GEORGE: Because it's on TV.
RUSSELL: (Threatening) Not yet. -- "Seinfeld", The Pitch.
It's a guess, but I'll throw it out there anyway. The 2010 Winter Olympics? No offense to the lugers, curlers, skaters, skiers, etc. I'm just not that into you. I applaud your efforts to win gold medals, but I won't be around to watch.
And I doubt I'm completely alone in this sentiment. Don't worry, you've still have plenty of eyeballs trained on your every move in Vancouver, though. (Maybe, I'm nuts, or at least in the minority. We'll see. This might make sense in a bit.)
Part of my disinterest is the way that marketers and the media and marketers try to cram the Games down our throats. Am I really supposed to let a couple speed skaters endorsing something influence how I feel about a certain product? Using Olympic athletes to market a product is the American way and I certainly don't begrudge any athlete in a fringe sport trying to grab some easy cash, though if that skater's first name was Apolo, would he have so many commercials?
So is pretending to care about something your brain forgets even exists until you're gently reminded every four years. To me, the Olympics, though historic, are part of a bygone era of sports. If there were still only three channels on television and the Inter-nets were limited to Mathew Broderick fighting Russian ICBM missiles, well, perhaps the Games would still hold much more appeal. (And if the "Red Dawn" era were still in play, the Olympics would hold a lot more cache, too.)
Again, the sporting aspect. I respect it and the athletes and their ardous and often times selfless training, I'm just not all too engaged by it. Maybe I'm just a crank and you can dismiss the next couple paragraphs. I suppose I'm patriotic but I don't judge my self-worth as an American by the performance of our snowboarding team.
What really ruffles my feathers is how the media looks at the event. A week ago did the majority of American know and or care about Lindsey Vonn was? Now, the media is treating her injured shin like it's the post-2000 election recount. (Just watch, she'll be fine, win some medals and we'll get the requisite stories of how she conquered adversity to win gold.)
This is probably a product of how NBC televises the Games. It's not so much that it's a sporting event, it's a two-week parade of human interest stories. It's all manufactured. Where else could you get away with tape delayed events in 2010?
And don't get me started with figure skating. Pass.
The Games magically beam down every fourth year, so the folks at 30 Rock simply expect people to get wrapped up and watch it.The logic behind the Olympics for NBC also appears to be, if we put it on in primetime, people will watch. (Okay, that didn't quite work with "The Jay Leno Show".)
Excuse if I'll just waste the two weeks playing on XBox or catching up on my NetFlix queue, or make a bigger dent into "The Walking Dead" or Stephen King's "Under the Dome." In the year 2010, there's no good reason to mindlessly watch stuff I have no interest in when there are countless on-demand entertainment options a finger click away. My guess is with media so fractured and personalized, we're beyond "Water Cooler Buzz." The Olympics on television might be a tradition, but our media options have changed so much the last five years that to me they're irrelevant -- but very difficult to avoid.
If you put a gun to my head, about the only worthwhile aspect of the Winter Games is the hockey tournament, since it serves as the defacto world championship. The players take it seriously, even if the pool of eligible countries is minimal. The hockey competition matters beyond the Olympics.
All this brings me in a roundabout way to how ESPN is going to sell the 2010 World Cup to the American public. Does my pure apathy toward the Olympics make me a hypocrite when it comes to the World Cup? Since I love one international sporting event, should I at least care a little bit about the other? (And did I alienate people by a possibly narrow-minded rant?)
As a person that cares about soccer, I pray that the powers that be in Bristol don't take the Olympic approach to promoting June's tournament in South Africa.
There's certainly plenty of people with my level of Olympic apathy toward soccer in general. No matter how you sell or package it, you're not changing the opinions of the Frank Defords (silver medalist) and Jim Romes (gold medalist) of the world. At this juncture in the year 2010, either you've been convinced soccer, or at least the World Cup, is an awesome sporting spectacle worth your attention, or you're not. And unless you're the most ardent soccer hater, you probably at least can respect the World Cup, even if the games themselves are sometimes lacking.
We've reached the point too, were the World Cup is beyond being a sporting curiosity for a decent percentage of Americans. There's a generation people that are savvy enough to understand it and think about it on a critical level, too. We don't need to be talked down to and spoon fed dribs and drabs of information or wooed by soft-lighting features.
However there's some major differences between the World Cup and the Winter Olympics, beyond the fact one event features the world's most popular sport while the other has a variety of events:
1) The World Cup stand on its own two legs from a purely sporting standpoint.
2) Millions and millions of people actively anticipate and look forward to the World Cup every four years. Outside of the small diehards of each discipline, there isn't that much appetite for the winter discipline sports. Put it this way, are folks Papa New Guinea glued to the seats for the biathlon?
3) Unlike the Olympics, the World Cup will be broadcast during the day in America on an all-sports network (7 a.m, 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern), not in prime time on NBC. It's a completely different audience, you know, actual sports fans, people that will ditch work to stay home and watch the Cup. It's doubtful too many offices around the States are getting sick calls the next two weeks for excuses to stay home and watch the slalom. If you're not interested in the World Cup, come June, you can escape its coverage, meanwhile the mainstream media still treats the Olympics like its still 1966, so you can't avoid the Games, every sports media is saturated by it.
4) No doubt the South African organizers will cook up some wacky opening ceremony in June, but mercifully it won't approach the outright unintentional comedy trainwreck that transpired in Vancouver Friday night. (The paucity of actors from "Trailer Park Boys" was a fail.)
* * *
Now a couple mild suggestions to the production crew in Bristol, err, Johannesburg for the Cup itself.
A) Yes, the Worldwide needs to get as many eyeballs to the set as possible, which means trying to find a way to hook in housewifes in Duluth just as much as the nerds like us that are watching the sport week-in, week-out. (Sadly, us hardcore fans aren't enough alone to make it worth ESPN's while.)
That said, we don't need soft focus features, especially on the U.S. team. How many times can we interview Landon Donovan, Carlos Bocanegra, Michael Bradley, etc. when they look like they're being held hostage and reading stuff with an AK-47 pointed at them off camera. No offense to these guys, but they're not all that compelling or dynamic as personalities go.
All these guys have basically just played soccer all their lives. It's not all that fascinating, nor does it have to be. They're players, plain and simple. Look, the same logic applies all the way up to guys like Lionel Messi, too.
And if you think about it, perhaps the only guy in the USMNT set-up with an ounce of charisma on television is Jozy Altidore, which sets up for an easy feature on how the earthquake in Haiti affected him.
In short, the USMNT and its reception back home in the States will be defined by what they do against England, Slovenia and Algeria, not by the stories written and filmed about them.
So yeah, I have nothing against Bob Ley profiling Nelson Mandela, apartheid and what the World Cup means to the country of South Africa. Those would actually be worthwhile. Let's just hope they go overboard, otherwise you get a Brett Favre corollary where you hear about sometime so often you end up tuning it out or disliking it.
A1) Weird quirk/wrinkle, in terms of the USMNT. Will any players on the squad cut special promos to air during the matches for any of the team's sponsors? Maybe we'll get a Landon Donovan Gatorade spot. Beyond that? Highly unlikely.
This is odd because in the other 31 nations in the tournament -- jury is out on North Korea -- you'd think companies inside the respective countries will market the hell out of the World Cup players. Think of McDonald's ads in Germany with Michael Ballack and Bastian Schweinsteiger causing chaos by kicking the ball through an indoor playland. Or Shunsuke Nakamura smiling with a Pepsi in his hand in Japan. Better yet, simply tune into the Univision broadcast and see all the endorsements lined up by the Mexican National Team players. I'm sure they'll be hawking everything from soft drinks to pickup trucks to cellular phones.
Again, don't forget the only major televised ad campaign Donovan has starred in was for the Mexican lottery. (El Landito)
And it's funny too, that American corporations like Coke and Pepsi will likely have campaigns designed around the World Cup with players from every participating country but the U.S.
Oh well. So long as Nike cooks up another great World Cup campaign, who'll notice anyway.
B) Please, no Team USA. Please. If you're going that route, call every squad that way. "Team Brazil", "Team England", etc. Nah. Doesn't work that way. Is it that hard to write "The U.S." or "United States"?
If you need to go that route, why not try "Team America"? (Fuck yeah.)
C) Keep Tommy Smythe and his smelly auld onion bag relegation to the radio broadcasts. We'll take Martin Tyler, thank you very much.
D) Here's how the broadcasts should play out. Pregame -- Game -- Postgame reaction -- color feature between matches -- second match of the day. Then let the analysis fly. Not hard.
And don't be afraid for the "inside baseball" shop talk. There are enough enlightened viewers that would openly embrace deep and thoughtful commentary over glib soundbites.
E) The U2 promos? I've never been to a city of blinding lights, so perhaps I'm no qualified to speak on it. Suffice to say, I'm not the biggest fan of Bono and the boys. It's not 1987 anymore.
Bottom line here folks, the World Cup is a sporting event, while the Olympics end up being a made-for-TV two-week event, with a dash of sports thrown in.
(That's enough curmudgeonly crankiness for a Monday morning, isn't it?)
GEORGE: No, no, no. Nothing happens.
JERRY: Well, something happens.
RUSSELL: Well, why am I watching it?
GEORGE: Because it's on TV.
RUSSELL: (Threatening) Not yet. -- "Seinfeld", The Pitch.
It's a guess, but I'll throw it out there anyway. The 2010 Winter Olympics? No offense to the lugers, curlers, skaters, skiers, etc. I'm just not that into you. I applaud your efforts to win gold medals, but I won't be around to watch.
And I doubt I'm completely alone in this sentiment. Don't worry, you've still have plenty of eyeballs trained on your every move in Vancouver, though. (Maybe, I'm nuts, or at least in the minority. We'll see. This might make sense in a bit.)
Part of my disinterest is the way that marketers and the media and marketers try to cram the Games down our throats. Am I really supposed to let a couple speed skaters endorsing something influence how I feel about a certain product? Using Olympic athletes to market a product is the American way and I certainly don't begrudge any athlete in a fringe sport trying to grab some easy cash, though if that skater's first name was Apolo, would he have so many commercials?
So is pretending to care about something your brain forgets even exists until you're gently reminded every four years. To me, the Olympics, though historic, are part of a bygone era of sports. If there were still only three channels on television and the Inter-nets were limited to Mathew Broderick fighting Russian ICBM missiles, well, perhaps the Games would still hold much more appeal. (And if the "Red Dawn" era were still in play, the Olympics would hold a lot more cache, too.)
Again, the sporting aspect. I respect it and the athletes and their ardous and often times selfless training, I'm just not all too engaged by it. Maybe I'm just a crank and you can dismiss the next couple paragraphs. I suppose I'm patriotic but I don't judge my self-worth as an American by the performance of our snowboarding team.
What really ruffles my feathers is how the media looks at the event. A week ago did the majority of American know and or care about Lindsey Vonn was? Now, the media is treating her injured shin like it's the post-2000 election recount. (Just watch, she'll be fine, win some medals and we'll get the requisite stories of how she conquered adversity to win gold.)
This is probably a product of how NBC televises the Games. It's not so much that it's a sporting event, it's a two-week parade of human interest stories. It's all manufactured. Where else could you get away with tape delayed events in 2010?
And don't get me started with figure skating. Pass.
The Games magically beam down every fourth year, so the folks at 30 Rock simply expect people to get wrapped up and watch it.The logic behind the Olympics for NBC also appears to be, if we put it on in primetime, people will watch. (Okay, that didn't quite work with "The Jay Leno Show".)
Excuse if I'll just waste the two weeks playing on XBox or catching up on my NetFlix queue, or make a bigger dent into "The Walking Dead" or Stephen King's "Under the Dome." In the year 2010, there's no good reason to mindlessly watch stuff I have no interest in when there are countless on-demand entertainment options a finger click away. My guess is with media so fractured and personalized, we're beyond "Water Cooler Buzz." The Olympics on television might be a tradition, but our media options have changed so much the last five years that to me they're irrelevant -- but very difficult to avoid.
If you put a gun to my head, about the only worthwhile aspect of the Winter Games is the hockey tournament, since it serves as the defacto world championship. The players take it seriously, even if the pool of eligible countries is minimal. The hockey competition matters beyond the Olympics.
All this brings me in a roundabout way to how ESPN is going to sell the 2010 World Cup to the American public. Does my pure apathy toward the Olympics make me a hypocrite when it comes to the World Cup? Since I love one international sporting event, should I at least care a little bit about the other? (And did I alienate people by a possibly narrow-minded rant?)
As a person that cares about soccer, I pray that the powers that be in Bristol don't take the Olympic approach to promoting June's tournament in South Africa.
There's certainly plenty of people with my level of Olympic apathy toward soccer in general. No matter how you sell or package it, you're not changing the opinions of the Frank Defords (silver medalist) and Jim Romes (gold medalist) of the world. At this juncture in the year 2010, either you've been convinced soccer, or at least the World Cup, is an awesome sporting spectacle worth your attention, or you're not. And unless you're the most ardent soccer hater, you probably at least can respect the World Cup, even if the games themselves are sometimes lacking.
We've reached the point too, were the World Cup is beyond being a sporting curiosity for a decent percentage of Americans. There's a generation people that are savvy enough to understand it and think about it on a critical level, too. We don't need to be talked down to and spoon fed dribs and drabs of information or wooed by soft-lighting features.
However there's some major differences between the World Cup and the Winter Olympics, beyond the fact one event features the world's most popular sport while the other has a variety of events:
1) The World Cup stand on its own two legs from a purely sporting standpoint.
2) Millions and millions of people actively anticipate and look forward to the World Cup every four years. Outside of the small diehards of each discipline, there isn't that much appetite for the winter discipline sports. Put it this way, are folks Papa New Guinea glued to the seats for the biathlon?
3) Unlike the Olympics, the World Cup will be broadcast during the day in America on an all-sports network (7 a.m, 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Eastern), not in prime time on NBC. It's a completely different audience, you know, actual sports fans, people that will ditch work to stay home and watch the Cup. It's doubtful too many offices around the States are getting sick calls the next two weeks for excuses to stay home and watch the slalom. If you're not interested in the World Cup, come June, you can escape its coverage, meanwhile the mainstream media still treats the Olympics like its still 1966, so you can't avoid the Games, every sports media is saturated by it.
4) No doubt the South African organizers will cook up some wacky opening ceremony in June, but mercifully it won't approach the outright unintentional comedy trainwreck that transpired in Vancouver Friday night. (The paucity of actors from "Trailer Park Boys" was a fail.)
Now a couple mild suggestions to the production crew in Bristol, err, Johannesburg for the Cup itself.
A) Yes, the Worldwide needs to get as many eyeballs to the set as possible, which means trying to find a way to hook in housewifes in Duluth just as much as the nerds like us that are watching the sport week-in, week-out. (Sadly, us hardcore fans aren't enough alone to make it worth ESPN's while.)
That said, we don't need soft focus features, especially on the U.S. team. How many times can we interview Landon Donovan, Carlos Bocanegra, Michael Bradley, etc. when they look like they're being held hostage and reading stuff with an AK-47 pointed at them off camera. No offense to these guys, but they're not all that compelling or dynamic as personalities go.
All these guys have basically just played soccer all their lives. It's not all that fascinating, nor does it have to be. They're players, plain and simple. Look, the same logic applies all the way up to guys like Lionel Messi, too.
And if you think about it, perhaps the only guy in the USMNT set-up with an ounce of charisma on television is Jozy Altidore, which sets up for an easy feature on how the earthquake in Haiti affected him.
In short, the USMNT and its reception back home in the States will be defined by what they do against England, Slovenia and Algeria, not by the stories written and filmed about them.
So yeah, I have nothing against Bob Ley profiling Nelson Mandela, apartheid and what the World Cup means to the country of South Africa. Those would actually be worthwhile. Let's just hope they go overboard, otherwise you get a Brett Favre corollary where you hear about sometime so often you end up tuning it out or disliking it.
A1) Weird quirk/wrinkle, in terms of the USMNT. Will any players on the squad cut special promos to air during the matches for any of the team's sponsors? Maybe we'll get a Landon Donovan Gatorade spot. Beyond that? Highly unlikely.
This is odd because in the other 31 nations in the tournament -- jury is out on North Korea -- you'd think companies inside the respective countries will market the hell out of the World Cup players. Think of McDonald's ads in Germany with Michael Ballack and Bastian Schweinsteiger causing chaos by kicking the ball through an indoor playland. Or Shunsuke Nakamura smiling with a Pepsi in his hand in Japan. Better yet, simply tune into the Univision broadcast and see all the endorsements lined up by the Mexican National Team players. I'm sure they'll be hawking everything from soft drinks to pickup trucks to cellular phones.
Again, don't forget the only major televised ad campaign Donovan has starred in was for the Mexican lottery. (El Landito)
And it's funny too, that American corporations like Coke and Pepsi will likely have campaigns designed around the World Cup with players from every participating country but the U.S.
Oh well. So long as Nike cooks up another great World Cup campaign, who'll notice anyway.
B) Please, no Team USA. Please. If you're going that route, call every squad that way. "Team Brazil", "Team England", etc. Nah. Doesn't work that way. Is it that hard to write "The U.S." or "United States"?
If you need to go that route, why not try "Team America"? (Fuck yeah.)
C) Keep Tommy Smythe and his smelly auld onion bag relegation to the radio broadcasts. We'll take Martin Tyler, thank you very much.
D) Here's how the broadcasts should play out. Pregame -- Game -- Postgame reaction -- color feature between matches -- second match of the day. Then let the analysis fly. Not hard.
And don't be afraid for the "inside baseball" shop talk. There are enough enlightened viewers that would openly embrace deep and thoughtful commentary over glib soundbites.
E) The U2 promos? I've never been to a city of blinding lights, so perhaps I'm no qualified to speak on it. Suffice to say, I'm not the biggest fan of Bono and the boys. It's not 1987 anymore.
Bottom line here folks, the World Cup is a sporting event, while the Olympics end up being a made-for-TV two-week event, with a dash of sports thrown in.
(That's enough curmudgeonly crankiness for a Monday morning, isn't it?)
On a much less important note If they run a ticker during these matches im screwed. Ill have to watch all of them on DVR. The plan was dvr the two early games and watch the 2:30 game live. There is no chance of this happening is there? On an even less important note, when do we start to hear the cries for networks to become more dvr friendly ie the ticker serving as a spoiler.
I think you're selling the Winter games short, though I do agree with your NBC analysis. Human interest stories blow goats (I have proof)...just show us the action, analyze it, and get the eff out of Dodge. I don't care that the Canadian moguls gold winner has a brother with palsy. But his run was incredible. Did you see the Nordic Combined? Tough not to enjoy that 26-minute stretch. I like the action. But to each their own.
As for WC2010, I think Martin Tyler is going to make it much more palatable for many Americans. He not only has the pipes for it, the accent lends instant credibility! Any word on Andy Gray this time around? Is he still with ESPN like at the Euros, or was that a one-time deal?
I tend to love the Winter Olympics far more than their summer brethren. The Summer Olympics is a showcase of athletes. Sure Usain Bolt had to do some training, but he was BORN able to break running records, he didn't earn it. Watching some kid do 3 flips and 12 twists in the air off a ski jump, or guide a luge at 90mph takes years and years and years of dedication and attention to detail.
Maybe my appreciation comes from the fact that at birth I was never ever going to win an Olympic high-jump, but I could've competed in the giant slalom had I had the drive and desire.
Eric C. Kriebel - I don't know what ESPN has in mind for these games, but I would guess that they'll run the scores. When they were showing the Champions League they wouldn't show scores for games they were showing on delay, but since they've already shown these games I'm guessing they're going to show it.
Ace Cowboy - I think you'll have to live with just Martin Tyler, looks like Andy Gray is going to FSC for the World Cup:
http://www.gauteng.net/gta2010/index.php/2010-news/249-andy-gray-and-richard-keys-added-to-fox-soccer-channel-world-cup-coverage
Cardillo - The Olympics in general are pretty terrible unless you played one of the events or it's a "major" sport. Anything with an objective scoring system is insane to me. The hockey tournament is the tits, especially since the US and Canada play in the first round. I generally enjoy rooting against the Canadians at any Olympics, with this one being in Vancouver it's all the better.
In defense of ESPN, they will actually TELEVISE the games LIVE. 95% of the battle is getting the games from a continent away live. NBC can't even do that from the West Coast.
Most of you may not be old enough to remember when ESPN had the 1st round of the NCAA basketball tournament in the late 80s and early 90s. They did a fantastic job wheeling around from good finish to good finish. When CBS took over, they completely effed it up and still stink at it.
ESPN may have its issues, but we're light years better off than we were 20 years ago when it comes to sports programming.
When you catch up with the Walking Dead add Scalped to your reading list. Best comic I've read in a long long time.