BELL LAP #31

TEN GOOD REASONS NOT TO WATCH THE OLYMPICS ON TV (September 20, 2000)

If you live in a part of the world that doesn't have Olympic coverage delivered by NBC or its cable lackeys, you can skip this column. Or better yet, read it and gloat. For the rest of you, here are ten good reasons to tune out:

1. Commercials--Other countries don't have to put up with this level of annoyance, so why should we? This coverage, like most commercial television content, is merely a delivery system for advertisements.

2) Sport Switching--When you're watching an NFL game, you don't suddenly find yourself watching handball, do you? Why then, do we track fans suddenly find ourselves watching a teenage girl jumping around a mat waving a stick with a big red ribbon on it?

3) Up Close and Personal--We don't care who wants to share their innermost fears or whose dog just croaked. Every athlete in these Games has a story--so what? Show us some competition or we're switching to mud wrestling or the presidential campaign. Or better yet, mud-wrestling during the presidential campaign.

4) Promos for fall shows--None of these sit-coms are going to have decent dialogue or believeable characters, and we've already seen the promotional clips a hundred times. The Olympics isn't just an opportunity to promote more vacuous television. We'd rather clean the basement than watch this tripe being hyped.

5) No distance races--The NBC suits don't think Americans can sit through an Olympic 5000, or that they'll enjoy even a couple of laps of the 10,000. As a result, every four years we miss seeing how the fastest distance runners in history can move, straining against the edges of the impossible with profound grace. We don't care if they're from Africa--we want to see them. If you try to show us another replay of the 100, we're leaving for a latte.

6) Xenophobia--We love to see Americans win, and we're truly moved by their tears. But we're also moved by the emotions of non-Americans, foreigners who love their countries, too. If the Olympics is supposed to be about athletes from around the world, then show athletes from around the world. If we want to wallow in nationalistic swill, we'll switch back to the presidential campaign.

7) No schedule of events--NBC isn't going to tell us when they're going to show which events. They're just going to package it all as they see fit to hook the greatest number of viewers. They call this entertainment; I call it extortion. YOU WANNA SEE YOUR SPORT, PAL? THEN DON'T MOVE.

8) Delayed coverage--Hey, that event happened a lonngggg time ago. We already know the details.

9) The web, newspapers, radio--In spite of attempts to enforce secrecy until the big guys are ready to coerce us to watch, there will be lots of Olympic coverage everywhere, including detailed coverage on this website of events you actually care about. Of course if we happen to walk past a TV when the video of an event we already know about finally sees the light of day, we might watch. Until the commercial break.

10) It just doesn't matter--The rest of the year, we track fans will gladly be urged to support TV viewings of track and field so the networks know we're out here. This Olympic coverage, though, is pablum for the masses. Whether WE watch or not is irrelevant.

On a positive note, we should at least take a moment to thank the inventor of the VCR. Fast forwarding can cure a host of ills, and this would be a good time to figure out how to program that thing.