Ebersol is a complex guy - so complex that any single-minded fixation on a positive or negative evaluation of his career seems inevitably driven by some agenda. I have been mostly a critic of his Olympic coverage - though for the most part I think it has been an improvement over ABC - we mostly criticize it against what we think it could or should be, not against what has been done before. I thought his last Olympics was his best. I have some respect for people like Bob Costas and Dan Patrick, who both have spoken highly of him in the last 12 hours.
The critics list some of his other failures, but they don't mention what a really good job he did producing most of the sports events he got. The Deadspin story includes a comment that the SNF production has been criticized, but does not give a source for it - I would really like to see that. I think the SNF has consistently been the best football telecast on air anywhere. Nobody has ever done the NBA better, or baseball (though of course NBC had a long history of doing a good job with MLB before Ebersol). I assume most of the anti-Ebersol vitriol is a function of his making common cause with the asshole. I also assume that just as the asshole was not able to cover his own ass in the eyes of his new overlords from his bad and costly decisions, neither ultimately was Ebersol. It will be interesting if ESPN gets the Olympic rights (and if Ebersol lands with the Mothership) to see if that is a net good or bad for NBC. Ebersol's obsession with the Olympics seemed to defy any rational financial pay-off. Maybe this made some sense in the years when NBC was without the NFL or any other major sports package, but it has increasingly made less and less sense and cents. I think we can anticipate that if ESPN gets the Os everything will be live, with the events popular with non-sports fan shown, either live or repeated, on ABC in primetime. This is the kind of arrangement I wished NBC had done the last 2 or 3 cycles - and I think most of the non-sports fans who want to see figure skating, gymnastics and synchronized swimming will still tune in even if the event was shown live on cable 6 hours earlier. If it were me I would run a big campaign on the network advising people that if they don't want to know who won, avoid the internet, radio and tv all day, don't watch anything other than ABC until 8:00 pm (tongue in cheek, but also half serious). On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 12:29 AM, JW <[email protected]> wrote: > > The surprising thing is that most of the commenters agree with her. > > Are these mostly Conan fans (knowing that most Internet message boards > > were critical of NBC's Olympics coverage over the years)? > > It looked to me like most of the commenters didn't like what he'd done > in Sports. > > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
