8.20.2004

I miss CBC

Having to watch the Olympics on US television really sucks. If the US team is not in the running in a given sport, they typically won't air the event. And the commentators are so blatantly biased. A stumble for an American gymnast would be called a "balance check" or "teeny wobble", the same mistake for an athlete from any other country would be labeled a "big miss" or "huge mistake". Same with the comments in the swimming events. The chest beating and self-backpatting from American commentators is so nauseating I can hardly stand to watch anymore. I just turned on the TV and caught a few minutes of the Nigeria vs. Germany soccer game and the commentators were not even talking about what was going on on the field! No, they were boasting about the intensity of the US soccer team's training methods. The US team was not even playing. I couldn't believe it. These commentators need to stop chanting U-S-A long enough to learn a little something about fairness, balance and maybe a little humility in their reporting.

I guess I better get used to it. Hockey season is coming and I gotta listen to more of this garbage from Fox Sports etc. I miss CBC and in a few months I'll really miss Hockey Night in Canada.

6 comments:

ceaz said...

I need to set up my Bell dish. It'd be nice if I could in my own apartment but I think that's going to be difficult. Gotta work with Shannph to get it up and running.. then we can all watch CBC HNIC every Saturday (when there's a Vancouver game on). I can go off on how CBC is biased towards the Leafs but that's another blog entry on its own.

Ben said...

Was watching NBC last night, and I stopped paying attention to the commentary a few minutes in. Pulled out my notebook and did some work. I can't stand how biased it is -- the women's diving SUCKED royally. Funny that judges would penalize them "so heavily" for just a few "minor slip-ups" for being "marginally off-center". Heck, they practically hit the water sideways.

Naomi said...

Oh gosh, I was watching the NBC coverage of the women's 10m diving prelims, too. The commentator was biased, but not as much as the USA judge. The Chinese judge was being very fair in its marks, but the USA judge totally slanted the Chinese divers' scores! The USA mark was always the lowest. And "oddly enough," it was also always the highest for the US divers. After I noticed the pattern, it really started pissing me off.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately it's no better on commercial Aussie TV down-under. Luckily we still have SBS who will broadcast pretty much anything, so I am getting to see a lot of volleyball with commentators who actually know what they are talking about.

I am sick of the commercial networks and their commentators. Their focus on gold medals rather than the athletes and their performances is sickening. Someone could melt seconds off their best time and fall over abosultely exhausted on the finish line, but if they don't make a final or get a medal then they have "failed to make the finals" - how about "put in an effort that all of Australia can be proud of"?

Cya,
'Brush

Cyrus said...

its kinda depressing to watch CBC right now with the poor showing our Canadian athletes are putting on. Every interview is like "Can you explain why you lost this time, especially with all the high expectations", and then you cringe watching the athlete in near tears, grasping for words. Lets just hope the canadians have a strong finish in the last few days of the games, eh? :)

Syndromes said...

Ugh. Best just to watch the Olympics on mute for most of the events.

The announcers (aka: propagandist machines) they bring in every 4 years are so friggin annoying!! Biased is an understatement...