1 thought on “FriendFeed: NBC explains decision …”
Brendan Loy
Over on Facebook, a friend commented in response to this link: “They were wise to, for all the reasons they mentioned.” Here’s my response:
I dunno. It’s hard to articulate this properly, and maybe I’m just prejudiced by my strong belief that ice dancing is NOT. A. SPORT., but I feel like there’s a point at which your elevation of demographic trends over objective “news judgment” (or whatever the sports equivalent is) causes your whole operation to jump the shark and lose a great deal of credibility as a legitimate broadcaster of the sporting event in question (i.e., the Olympics).
It’s one thing to tweak your schedule and programming choices around the edges, in a way that panders to the requisite groups — that’s just good business — but to elevate **tape-delayed skiing** and **ice dancing** (the latter being, like everything else, tape delayed at least in the West; dunno if it was live back East) ahead of something as intrinsically significant to a U.S. sports audience as the United States vs. Canada in hockey, seems just totally indefensible. At that point, you are really no longer broadcasting the Olympics; rather, you are broadcasting a prepackaged, demographically tuned reality show based on the Olympics that’s targeted at women and casual fans. Which is fine, I suppose, but then can ESPN do the *actual* Olympics broadcast please, for people who, y’know, want to WATCH THE OLYMPICS? The live sporting event, not the Lifetime original series?
P.S. Re: ice dancing, let me be clear(TM) … figure skating, including pairs figure skating, is a different matter. Totally a sport. But ice dancing?!?! No f***ing way. Never has been a sport, never will be.
Over on Facebook, a friend commented in response to this link: “They were wise to, for all the reasons they mentioned.” Here’s my response: