The only thing worse than the networks’ coverage of the Olympic Games would be if the TV networks didn’t cover the Games. We could play a drinking game: name all the things you hate about NBC (or the BBC or ….)’s coverage of the Olympics. You’d be plastered before the athletes started marching into the stadium.
The packaged, preselected narrative ruins the live experience as TV aims for the most photogenic, the most “American-looking,” the most-likely winners, and ignores most everyone else. The nightly entertainment package is full of insipid chatter by the hosts, incessant shots of family members, content-less interviews with athletes who aren’t competing, and not enough competition to show the competition. And don’t get me started on the idiotic obsession with the medal count. So much to dislike about the way the entertainment media “crafts” narratives about the sports, so much that interferes with the sports, themselves.
In fact, I was planning on a good ol’ fashioned rant about the lousy media as the Opening Ceremonies approached, but I started thinking about the history of the Games. The media changes the Games because the media curates the Games, with its intrusive format controlling the content as that guy McLuhan would say. But is it THAT different today than before?
As much as we prefer our athletes to be unsullied by the watchers, we might think about how their performance has always been about both the audience and purveyors. We want to watch; they want to compete. The media is in the middle. The media has changed the game, but it always has been doing that, from the time of the ancient Greeks to the 1896 reboot to the introduction of television to the drones and ubiquitous cameras. AI will introduce some other ruination and perversion, but…same as it ever was. There’s always been an unholy alliance between the athlete, the audience, and the curator.
