• by September 7, 2004

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW, AND OTHER NOTEWORTHY ALLIANCES -- As far as media alliances go, there were some pretty strange bedfellows announced on Tuesday. Or, depending on your perspective, some extremely logical ones. First we hear from Nielsen Media Research that once of the most influential minority groups of all, Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, has endorsed Nielsen's controversial local people meter system as a "step in the right direction." Next we hear from right-wing Fox News that it teamed up with the lefties at the Rock the Vote Foundation. Of course, Fox News and RVF were meeting on fairly neutral ground, a Media Center panel discussion exploring the "effects of interactive media on political dialog and the 2004 national elections in the United States." And yet, while we imagine that the discussants, RVF founder Jehmu Greene and FoxNews.com executive editor Stephen Bromberg, may not have necessarily arrived at a common ground during their dialog Tuesday afternoon, we believe they surely must have agreed on one thing: That the Internet, blogs and other new communications platforms are having a profound impact on the voters.

The Nielsen and Rainbow/PUSH announcement, meanwhile, seems to put a damper on the whole Don't Count Us Out Thing. By the way, has anyone else noticed that the anti-people meter forces have grown awfully quiet in the weeks following the Media Rating Council's conditional accreditation of Nielsen's local people meter system. And now that Rev. Jackson has thrown his impressive political and street cred behind LPMs, we find it hard to imagine the Rev. Al Sharpton making another run at the gates of Nielsen's New York headquarters, protesting the new local ratings measurement system.

"We all want to be counted," said Rev. Jackson, in a not-so-veiled allusion to DCUO's name and marketing campaign, "but the count must be as fair and accurate and inclusive, and as scientifically accurate as possible." All we can deduce, is that unlike Rev. Sharpton, Rev. Jackson apparently subscribes to The Riff. Otherwise, why would he go on to cite the fact that where Nielsen has rolled out local people meters (New York, Chicago and Los Angeles), it "has substantially increased the number of African American and Latino families who are measured in these local markets."

We can't wait to see how DCUO spins that one.

MILLIONS MAY HAVE WATCHED THE ATHENS GAMES, BUT WAS ANYBODY ACTUALLY LISTENING? -- We don't know about your inboxes, but if they're anything like ours then they are often filled with strings of email forwards from relatives, friends or acquaintances recounting things that are either odd or humorous. On Tuesday, we received one that was both. Perhaps you've seen it already. This one purports to be a list or a ranking of the "top nine comments made by NBC Sports commentators" during the network's coverage of the 2004 Olympic Summer Games from Athens, Greece. And based on some preliminary research, it's hard to determine its authenticity, at least in its entirety. If the list is true, it is both hilarious, as well as a frightening example of the misstatements that can sometimes be made during the frenzy of live (well, actually it was tape-delayed) broadcasts. Sure, we've already seen a number of examples of that over the past year, and the FCC has even gotten into the act of fining some of those indecent acts. Now, if the email exchange is true, the IOC could well get into the act.

The comments, as you might imagine, included a slew of sexual implications raised by the inappropriate use of routine sports terminology, including "balls," "mounted," "cox," "Dicks" and "snatch." Of course, not all of them were lewd in nature. Some were just plain silly, such as the one allegedly made by gold medal American gymnast Paul Hamm: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father." Or the one supposedly made by a boxing analyst: "Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious."

Well, our curiosity was piqued enough by the email string of alleged NBC Sports gaffs to see if they were in fact true, or just more of the kind of urban myths that can so easily be spread by ubiquitous email exchanges.

The answer: We're not sure. The source, urban myth website debunker snopes.com.

Here's what snopes had to say about the "origins" of the NBC Sports hearsay:

"Despite an increasing public sensitivity to the perpetuation of derogatory stereotypes, those who are seen as having become undeservedly famous and wealthy - actors, athletes, models - continue to serve as the butts of jokes that play on their supposed lack of intelligence. Athletes say some incredibly dumb things, these jokes emphasize, therefore athletes really are dumb (as are sports announcers, especially since many of them are former athletes)."

Here's what snopes had to say about the authenticity of the supposed commentator remarks:

"Not all of the examples listed... are really the product of 'dumbness,' though. Many of them are simply unintentionally humorous double entendres, the kind that are easy to make when one works in a field with a distinct jargon, such as sports. (Since the Olympic Games include many different types of sports, each with its own distinct jargon, the possibilities for inadvertent humor are many.) None of these quotes originated with the 2004 Olympics in Athens, however - similar lists with somewhat differently-worded entries attributed to other people (and featuring some non-Olympic sports) were circulating as far back as 1999, particularly in Australia during the run-up to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

But as far as we're concerned, the questionable nature of NBC Sports' Olympic comments raises another question that is much bigger than the authenticity of the NBC Sports remarks. That is, how is it possible that given the unparalleled reach of Olympics TV coverage, which reached nearly 1 billion people worldwide, nobody can verify whether these things were actually said, or not? And if nobody can do that, what makes an Olympics advertiser think anyone can recall or properly associate their advertising spots?