by Larry EderWe have asked Jim Dunaway, editor of American Track & Field, to rate each TV broadcast of the Olympic Trials. Here is what he had to say about the June 23 broadcast!
James is rating the TV broadcast one 1-5 stars, with 5 being the best rating.
The TV Trials
by
Jim Dunaway Saturday,
June 23 ***1/2
This evening NBC gave us viewers an unexpected-but-welcome bonus — 90 minutes of live Olympic Trials TV,
instead of the previously announced 60 minutes – for its first network showing
of The Trials.
That’s
a big break for track fans following The Trials on TV and on the Internet. And
since I’m here to help those viewers get the most out of their viewing, I think it’s great.
The
show started right off with two high-quality races, the semifinals of the men’s
800 meters. The camera work was excellent, and it was easy to follow the racing
visually, although the only splits I can recall in either race were at 400
meters.
However,
the calls of both semis were, I thought, quite insufficient, with Tom Hammond
and Lewis Johnson rarely going deeper than the first two leaders in each heat
(who are those other six guys, anyway?). In Heat 1, third placer Elisha Greer
didn’t get a call until halfway down the homestretch, and in Heat 2, third
place qualifier Ryan Martin didn’t get a call at all.
In
horse racing, it’s standard procedure to make a complete first-to-last call of
the racers not once but several times in each race. I know from experience that
capable TV announcers can make those in-depth calls; so I must assume that the
producer doesn’t want them, although they can be done quickly and in my opinion
make a race more interesting. And of course it helps viewers actually see more of what they’re looking at.
This
subject deserves a full discussion of how track-and-field should be presented
on television, which I’ll attempt sometime in the next week or so.
After
the 800 semis came the 400 semis of both men and women. Here again there
seemed to be a tendency on the part of Hammond and Ato Boldon to stick with the
big names when calling the races – although actually they named more people as
they flashed down the backstretch in the 400 semis than in the 800 semis. But since
most of the runners in each 400 were only introduced as names, I think it would
be helpful if they would also use lane numbers and uniform colors to give viewers
some extra visual cues.
When
we got to the women’s finals in the 100 hurdles and the 100 meters, each
finalist was allotted 10-15 seconds of full-screen introduction, so you the
viewer could see what she and her uniform looked like, while Hammond or Bolden told you something about
her. Here, I think, I’d have liked a somewhat more personal touch; for example,
how did English Gardner get her name, where is she from, and how did she end up
in Oregon? I’m
sure people would remember a lot more about her with that kind of an introduction
than the fact that she’s the Pac-10 and NCAA 100 champion.
These
athletes are people, after all.
The
only really BAD thing in this telecast was a segment involving an
announcer
named Michelle Beadle, newly hired by NBC, and former Olympic decathlon
gold
medalists Dan O’Brien and Bruce Jenner. I could make no sense out of
what they
were saying or why they were saying it. Jenner,
wise in the ways of media, did most of the talking, while Dan got in
only an occasional word, and Ms. Beadle didn’t seem to know what to say
(although she laughed a lot). The segment lasted perhaps five minutes
but
seemed like fifteen. However long it was, it was a total waste of time.
On
the other hand, the last part of the telecast was stirring, stunning and
sensational. After nine events in the decathlon, born-and-bred Oregonian Ashton
Eaton had clinched first place and a place on the Olympic team, but he decided
to take a shot at Dan O’Brien’s American record
, and eh! maybe the world record.
You
know that almost every decathlon
1,500 is sleep-inducing – oh, occasionally there’s a little
race-within-the-race which might allow Joe Zilch to overtake John Doe for third
place, but that’s about it.
But this
one was unlike any I’ve ever seen. Soon after the 16 survivors began their 3 ¾ laps,
Curtis Beach, who’s good enough to be a sub-four miler, went to the front,
closely followed by Joe Detmer, who’s almost as good. A long way behind them
was Eaton, in fifth, and then in fourth. With 400 meters to go, Eaton was
third, maybe 40 meters behind Beach and Detmer.
I
can not possibly write this to make it as exciting as it was, but in the past I
have seen examples of Eaton’s remarkable control of mind-over-body, and I began
screaming at the TV set because I could see that he WANTED it. And amazingly,
he did it. Right before the finish, Beach and Detmer slowed and separated
and let Eaton finish first, Detmer with a huge grin, and why not: he knew he was taking part in something special.
The
cameras, the announcers and the producer were perfect on this one —
absolutely on top of the race and of its significance — and then let
Eaton’s victory celebration tell its own story.
Wow!
