On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 6:14 PM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote:
> An excellent example of Type 4 occurred last night during the Womens > Gymnastics finals. Russia went next to last, and the US went last. The > Russians laid a major egg, making the US performance almost > perfunctory to win the gold. However, NBC did two things: edited out > the Russians performance and neglected to integrate their performance > into their broadcast, including identifying their performance when it > came to the scores. If you went solely off the broadcast, you would > assume that the Americans were battling for a gold medal. In fact, > they were all but assured the medal when the Russians faltered. But > that would remove the drama, so NBC just decided to ignore the fact. > > > http://deadspin.com/5930817/the-us-already-had-gold-locked-up-after-this-floor-disaster-from-russias-world-champion-so-nbc-didnt-show-it-to-you > The Deadspin piece is a little unclear, but basically correct. I was actually watching the Gymnastics coverage with my calculator, and figuring out what the Russians would need to average to pass the Americans. By the start of the last rotation (floor exercise) it was still possible for the US to lose, but the Russians would have had to do better than they had in the qualifications, and the US would have had to do much worse (and the US had already done worse than the Russians to begin with). NBC did show the first 2 Russian girls on the floor (I happen to have my scratch paper right here by my keyboard still, they scored 14.8, which was already lower than what they needed, and then 12.466, which was so low that it was already almost a foregone conclusion that the US would win). I crunched some numbers and figured out what the third girl would have to do get to make it even possible the US could lose, and then suddenly, without any warning, NBC skipped the 3rd Russian performer, and started up with the US girls, pimping the drama for all it was worth, even though, since they did show the scoreboard briefly, I was able to do some basic math and realize that the US would win even if each girl fell twice during each routine. This was the most flagrant example of NBC editing the actual competition to create a false sense of drama that I have seen this Olympics. It would be as if, when showing the Super Bowl, NBC decided not to show the team ahead had scored a field goal to go ahead by 10 points, just to create a false sense of drama that the team behind had a chance to win on a last second touchdown. Furthermore, NBC has been using video of the US girls floor performance in the aftermath to show how the girls performed under intense pressure to win the Gold. The US Girls had a remarkable performance last night, and deserve their share of glory - but that should have been illustrated by their wonderful performance on the first rotation (vault) and their grittty performances on their two weaker events, where there was real drama, on the uneven bars and balance beam. My impression was that the real motivation for NBC for the misleading editing was to further the storyline that they were committed to, which was the redemption of Jordyn Wieber. Wieber did not perform on the beam. If NBC had told the story honestly, it would have been that the US beam performance had pretty much put them in position to get the Gold - all they had to do was not stink on the floor. But that would have meant that Wieber was not part of the crucial rotation that won them the Gold, so they re-packaged the story to make her seem like the hero that won the team the Gold, even though her own dreams for an individual medal had been stolen (stolen by whom? NBC never came out and said which of the other two US gymnasts they would rather have seen crying while Wieber moved on to the overalls, but I assume it was the other not-black girl, since I saw some promotional lead up piece from NBC a few weeks/months ago that was already setting up a story line of Wieber vs "Gabby" (the black girl) for the all around title. And even then I had the impression that the NBC graphics department had already put their finishing touches on an image of Wieber on a Wheaties box. -- 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
