In Canada, for as long as I can remember, we have been able to see both the US feeds and the Canadian feeds which, for the most part, have been broadcast on CBC (except for a few years where CTV pipped the rights). All cable packages had the closest local US feeds (I know more about Spokane than I ever thought possible) so the comparison has been easy to make.
The trope has always been that while both national broadcasts are patriotic in their coverage, the Canadian programming acknowledged that other countries had made it to the Games. It's basically taken as fact that Canadian is better than American at showing the "whole" games. I've been on this list for a long time now and that definitely seems to be the opinion of those few Americans who can get CBC coverage and make the comparison themselves. And it's still happening. Case in point: the other night I watched the final in the women's 4x200 freestyle. The Americans were strongly favoured but as always faced a challenge from Australia. (Canada finished third). I watched the leadup and coverage of the race on both channels. The difference was obvious. Where CBC provided a feed of each country's team emerging from the ready room, NBC only bothered showing the Americans and the Australians. Once the teams were out, the NBC commentary in the leadup to the race was entirely US centric and the camera never left their team. Over on CBC, the commentators were talking about the other teams, including Canada, showing their preparations and warmups. Almost the entire race was split screened with the race itself on one half of the screen and the next American to swim shown in the other screen. CBC flipped to show the next swimmer maybe once in the whole race and that was for the anchor of the Canadian team. Maybe it's the difference between the broadcaster from a powerhouse nation that finds itself on the podium far more often than does a middle power like Canada. Maybe it's a different mindset in the two countries where one is "just happy to be there" and the other expects/demands success (though I can tell you, the Canadian Olympic Committee is held to account after a "bad" showing at the games). But I have to tell you I strongly favour the Canadian version of the coverage because it seems to be in keeping with the spirit of international competition. Sorry, maybe I'm just being jingoistic. We've covered this to death both at this Olympiad and every other one but I'd be curious to hear what other people think about the whys. Is it more than just a drive for broadcast revenue? Chris On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote: > It was a 5:00 PM ET start, so the game was in the books when McKay went on > the air at 8:00. Both games were in the same rink, so they'd have had to > have time to reset the building for the nightcap. > > On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 12:55 AM JW <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > I would strongly disagree that they weren't building to that game. Here >> is >> > part of Jim McKay's introduction: >> >> There's a lot I don't remember 36 years later, like what time the US-USSR >> game actually started. If the second game started at 8:45, then the first >> game must have been very late, if not over, when ABC went on the air, and >> the Miracle was possible, if not certain. If the Soviets had been up 6-1 >> when the telecast started, I don't think McKay would have expressed that >> same excitement. Perhaps ABC would have shown more skiers and less hockey. >> We'll never know, which is fine with me. >> > -- > -- > 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 > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
