I have been without power for most of the previous two days (I live in a rural area, and my electricity comes from one of the worst power companies in the US), so I was doubly glad I got up early Saturday to watch the T&F live, as I was only able to watch the NBC primetime coverage from Saturday night this (Monday) morning. And yes, what we see online at NBCSPORTS.com of the track events live is OBS, even when it will be an anchor of NBC’s primetime coverage with their commentators and production.
In this case, while I do really like the NBC T&F commentators, the OBS coverage of the event was 100X better. NBC slices and dices it in so many ways, combining tape of events that happened more than 12 hours earlier with live coverage, often without even noting the difference for viewers, and of course also switching to completely different sports, that they lost all sense of the electricity of what was happening that night in the stadium. I could describe a number of examples, but one stands out: The winning of the Mes’s 100 Meters was an Italian (a multiracial guy born in Texas, but who grew up in Italy with his Italian mother). It was pretty much a shocker that he won. Yards after crossing the finish line, a white dude runs up and gives him a passionate, full body hug lasting several seconds. NBC viewers would have had no idea what was going on, and their commentators did not even comment on it. Later, NBC had Mike Tirico come on and explain, and then show the contextual footage, but it lost a lot in the translation. That enthusiastic hugger was the Italian Gianmarco Tammberi who had just minutes before won a gold medal in the High Jump, in very dramatic fashion, as he tied with a guy from Qatar, and they had the option to do a jump off, but agreed to both take the Gold, which triggered passionate celebration and hugging on both sides. This guy hung around to watch his teammate run the 100M, and when he won what is the trademark even of the Track and Field meet, and maybe even of the Olympics, he went nuts. It was a genuinely thrilling, spontaneous moment, the kind that makes the Olympics great, the kind of moment that NBC is continually trying to manufacture, and because of the structure of NBC’s coverage, they completely muffed it. On Mon, 2 Aug 2021 at 3:37 AM Adam Bowie <a...@adambowie.co.uk> wrote: > > On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 11:49 AM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I am up early (3:00 am PT) to watch the Men’s 100 M semifinals and finals >> live. The Women’s 100 M was on live in Primetime last night, but I guess >> the men’s did not work out to have in the morning in Tokyo. I’m not >> complaining about that. >> >> While I am happy there is a way to watch this and every Olympic event >> live on nbcsports.com, using what per Adam I am now is the OBS (Olympic >> Broadcasting Services) feed, and have been using this a lot for both live >> and delayed viewing, I am wondering why NBC does not just air its own >> coverage live, and then replay it for Primetime? >> >> It seems like the Primetime coverage of events like gymnastics and Track, >> even when taped from earlier in the day, is “Live to tape”, and the NBC >> talent fir these events is on site in Tokyo and doing their jobs as the >> event takes place. Or do they go back and edit and even sweeten or re-do >> parts? >> >> I didn’t care that much fir the gymnastics, but I like the NBC crew fir >> Track, and am missing them. >> >> > This all sounds curious. So am I correct in assuming that when some events > that don't fall into US primetime go out live - e.g. athletics in the > middle of the night PST - the commentary feed you're getting is the OBS > world feed, and not with the NBC team? It's only when those same events get > packaged for perhaps Today or evening primetime that the NBC talent is > added to the mix? > > I get that NBC can package things up a bit more smoothly, dropping in > interviews and features, removing heats that don't have US competitors > involved, and generally tightening things up for later in the day. But why > wouldn't you use the same commentary teams throughout? > > In Europe we're sort of in the same boat, with much live action taking > place overnight. I wake up each morning to a phone full of alerts (aka > "spoilers") about which medals were won overnight during Tokyo-daytime. But > if I do choose to stay up late and watching live, the same BBC commentators > are calling the action that I'll see later on. The only time OBS commentary > feeds are used is if the BBC is including their own commentators at all > (e.g. Mountain biking). Certainly, by the time we get to an evening > package, which is *all* highlights given the timezone differences, > everything is packaged much more tightly, and they've collected a bunch of > post-event interviews, but the fundamentals are the same as if I had been > watching at 4am. > > As long as nobody is still "re-ordering" things to create "better" > narratives as I know has been done in the past... :-) > > > > Adam > > -- > 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 tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGAQtobKJ%2Bi1%3DsygF1yMkOLmvZNBVSP9GyiQnF_tXMK6tQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAD_sJGAQtobKJ%2Bi1%3DsygF1yMkOLmvZNBVSP9GyiQnF_tXMK6tQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. 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