haapanen@watdcsu.UUCP (Tom Haapanen [DCS]) (08/06/84)
<.>
Subsequent to complaints from a lot of people, including Juan
Samaranch, ABC/Peter Ueberroth finally have responded. Their excuse:
it was a mistake.
Mistake? What mistake? Well, what Mr. Ueberroth is alluding to is
the fact that the Olympic Village is shown the U.S. feed, not the
international one, and so not *quite* everything is hunky-dory. He
seems to miss the point, though, that the American public is seeing
practically only U.S. athletes competing. Even with the U.S. team
performing so strongly, the coverage can only be termed atrocious. On
Saturday, triple jump competition in the Coliseum. Did anybody see
jumpers other than the American who won? Sunday, women's marathon.
Did ABC not spend 90% of the marathon coverage on Joan Benoit? There
was some excellent running elsewhere, too.
Howard Cosell takes the cake, though! This guy is unbelievable! How
he manages to go through a round of U.S. vs. somebody-else without
even one sentence about the other guy escapes me. I was overjoyed on
Sunday, when the gutsy little Korean (Moon I think was his name)
stopped Robert Shannon. All Howie could say was that Korean fighters
had 'superb conditioning.' Before that, though, was the quote of the
day:
'The fact that he is an American will not prevent me from
saying that he is a brilliant boxer.'
Right, Howard. Go on... I ended up watching the Moon/Shannon fight
three times (ABC, CBC, French CBC) just to gloat over Cosell's loss!
Somebody (this was over in net.flame) mentioned that ABC's coverage of
actual events was minimal. I decided to take a random sample: in one
hour, they spent about 25 mins on events (includes time spent by
athletes on track before&after actual event), and 35 mins on
interviews, scenery, commercials, and Howards Cosell's endless
ramblings. CBC, on the other hand, provided about 45 mins of sports,
and *much* less commercials. Incidentally, CBC shows much more stuff
live than ABC; the latter seems to show a lot of stuff taped,
especially if it is something mundane like rowing where the U.S. is
not likely to get a gold...
Not that CBC is perfect either. They do have 12-13 hours of coverage
per day, and I feel that they have the best coverage I have *ever*
seen, either here or in Europe. However, they don't show much of
field events like triple jump, javelin or hammer throw (I had to watch
the Finnish javelin victory in French!). However, they show a lot of
non-Canadians, and even of the athlete profiles, only about half are
Canadian.
Personally, I feel I am living in an optimum location for viewing,
with ABC, CBC and French CBC (Radio-Canada) all available. I just
keep flicking through these until I get some decent coverage. I just
have to learn some more French...
Tom Haapanen
{allegra,decvax,ihnp4}!watmath!watdcsu!haapanen
"Verta pakkiin Suomen poika
ettei jenkit meita voita!"
(better than rot13 --- get out your Finnish dictionaries!"cdash@druxv.UUCP (Shub) (08/07/84)
> Somebody (this was over in net.flame) mentioned that ABC's coverage of > actual events was minimal. I decided to take a random sample: in one > hour, they spent about 25 mins on events (includes time spent by > athletes on track before&after actual event), and 35 mins on > interviews, scenery, commercials, and Howards Cosell's endless > ramblings. > and WHICH network showed the US finland hockey game IN ITS ENTIRETY when the USA needed to beat them after beating the russians? charlie (wish i had a dish to receive CBC to get good coverage) shub ATTIS denver