• by February 21, 2006

IS TORINO HAUNTED BY GHOSTS OF NBC'S OLYMPICS PAST? -- Has NBC lost its Olympic soul? That's the impression you'd get after watching the first week of coverage of the Torino Winter Games, a puerile, testosterone-infused prime-time sports highlights show that seems to be leaving out the most important clip of all: the spirit of the Olympic Games. When did snowboarding - especially the extreme sport of boarder crossing - become the preeminent Winter Olympics competitions? Could it be that NBC Sports is that enamored by ESPN's X Games that it is trying to recreate its own international version?

The NBC-Universal Television Networks have been producing the Olympics equivalent of Newton Minow's "vast wasteland." When "American Idol" makes the greatest Winter Games of the modern era look like an also-ran there is either something wrong with the American viewing public, or with American viewing options.

For heaven's sake, NBC is in the land of La Dolce Vita, but you don't get any feeling of that. The Torino coverage is sadly reminiscent of the Seoul Games in '88 when NBC seemed to want to cover the games like a news event. Torino '06, as a series, just isn't building any sense of excitement around the Games as a whole. Where's the narrative momentum? Where's the story? Where's the edification?

Take NBC's Feb. 11 coverage of the 5,000-meter speed skating competition. The last skater in the men's event was an Italian who was a medal contender. He started slowly and fell well off the pace during the first few laps. Then, suddenly, he came on powerfully at the end, skating faster over the last few hundred meters than anyone before him had -- and he won the bronze.

During his skate the announcers did a good job of building and maintaining excitement. But at the end they predictably cut back to the American gold medal winner. That was fine, and he was a good story, for sure, but you never heard another word about the Italian. There's no excuse if you understand the meaning of the Olympics.

It probably only deserved a ten-second visual to capture the Italian's elation, but if you peg everything on the Americans and their medal count without telling good stories about the Games and athletes from other countries, you're in trouble when American performance goes down the toilet.

The ghost of the NBC's Olympic Triplecast haunts these Games like an archetypal demon from a Dan Brown thriller. Too much of a good thing is still too much. And it's not just the on-screen competition, but the on-air promotion, as well. The marketing surrounding next summer's release of the "Da Vinci Code" movie has done more to build a sense of anticipation than NBC's advertising and promotion department has for Torino 2006. Shame on Burbank!

Roll the credits! As Vonnegut would say: So it goes.

"When television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland." - From former FCC Chairman Newton Minow's speech to the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961.