No Time For the Poetry

When NBC won the right to broadcast this year’s Summer Games, network executives knew they were taking on diplomatic and security problems, daunting logistics and steep financial risks. Despite street protests and the odd control-room snafu, the Olympic movement has largely surmounted politics, and TV technology has done justice to that glorious diversity. But the financial news last week was disappointing for NBC and, indirectly, for the organizers of future Olympics. U.S. TV ratings were 20% lower than projected, forcing NBC to pledge compensation to advertisers.

At least part of the reason for the muted response is that NBC was doing a sober, workmanlike job of news coverage at a happening that is not best appreciated as a news event. NBC’s telecasts lacked juice. They dampened emotions by highlighting what often proved to be the wrong events; they cut away at the wrong moments; they stinted most medal ceremonies. The dominant, brooding presence was anchor Bryant Gumbel, on loan from Today. He was as smooth and knowledgable as usual, but with gravity better suited to a Moscow summit. NBC has plenty of on-air talent, including Gayle Gardner and Bob Costas, but no producer akin to ABC’s Roone Arledge to evoke the poetry of the Games.

Even if its coverage were impeccable, NBC would have had a hard time competing with the widely cherished memory, perhaps more luminous in recollection than in fact, of ABC’s handling of seven consecutive U.S. Olympic broadcasts. Particularly vivid in U.S. viewers’ minds were the emotional highs of 1984, when the Summer Games were held on home ground in Los Angeles and, in the wake of a Soviet-led boycott, U.S. athletes won 83 gold medals. ABC’s coverage then was so full of pro-U.S. cheerleading that athletes from other nations made a formal complaint.

NBC opted for a subtler form of boosterism: its commentators are neutral, but if a sport offers dim prospects for a U.S. medal, it gets scant airtime. U.S. viewers intrigued by all the advance talk about Soviet gymnast Dmitri Bilozerchev were able to view only a smattering of his routines, although the reporting team of Dick Enberg, Mary Lou Retton and especially Bart Conner explained the events incisively. Fans of men’s diving were lucky to see Greg Louganis tucked into the bottom right-hand corner while a minor basketball game dominated the screen.

To some extent, such frustrations are inevitable: gymnastics buffs want to see every routine, swimming mavens every heat. Yet not even 179 1/2 hours of coverage is enough to display more than about a tenth of all the action. But NBC’s sense of proportion has been peculiarly maddening. It broke into live coverage of Janet Evans’ gold-medal swim in the 400-meter individual medley to air a banal taped interview with her. Night after night, viewers saw just enough volleyball or water polo to frustrate them as they waited for something else, yet not enough context or start-to-finish action to convert them into enthusiasts of an unfamiliar sport.

When NBC showed off its no-nonsense journalism, the results were sometimes grating. After boxer Anthony Hembrick was disqualified for arriving late, reporter Wallace Matthews bulled into an inner room where Hembrick slouched disconsolate. Matthews thrust a microphone into the stricken youth’s face while posing the perennial pointless question about how Hembrick felt. As soon as swimmer Matt Biondi was touched out for the gold by a hundredth of a second in the 100-meter butterfly, analyst John Naber nastily opined that Biondi “deserved the loss” because he had glided in rather than risk a final, choppy stroke that might have caused him to collide with the wall.

Back when NBC set its Olympic ad rates, with an average prime-time price of $330,000 a spot, officials thought they were being cautious in projecting a rating of 21.2, meaning an audience of just over a fifth of U.S. households. Instead, prime-time ratings through the first six days averaged just 16.7. NBC officials noted that Olympics ratings tend to improve as the Games go on; the network’s coverage gradually has. They said the Seoul venture would still show a profit, if less than the expected $65 million. Said NBC Sports president Arthur Watson, in offering customary “make good” spots to buyers of commercial time: “We have an obligation to our advertisers, and we intend to keep it.” Among the reported recipients: Coca-Cola, Xerox, McDonald’s and Anheuser-Busch. Many disgruntled viewers were wishing for some way that NBC could provide make-goods to them too.