Aussie comedians Roy & H.G. commentate on Men’s Gymnastics at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. 
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
NBC TV coverage of the Olympics is taking a beating. As usual.
#NBCfail
Dvora Meyers is eloquent in her take down – Fake, Jingoistic, And Stupid: Gymnastics Coverage Is The Worst Part Of NBC’s Olympics
For the record, I don’t mind Al Trautwig as the dumb-as-a-stick everyman, relating to the non-gymnastics viewer. Tim Daggett is an active coach who knows what he’s talking about. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have explaining our sport to the general public.
Elfi Schlegel, a lovely person, never seems to add anything to the description. Bland, but not bad.
NBC must like them, though. They’ve been mainstays for many, many years.
Mashable has an outlandish proposal. Have the IOC sell the rights to a tech-savvy startup which would package video for any and all buyers.
Interesting. No NBC monopoly in the USA.
Don’t hold your breath, though. NBC paid $4.38 billion last year for exclusive rights to broadcast the summer and winter Olympics through 2020
(via The Gymnast Life)
16 comments ↓
That Deadspin article is spot on. I’ve been watching the main live feed online, with Shannon Miller and the British dude, and then watching the NBC evening broadcast. The contrast is stark. Shannon and the British dude have provided really good commentary, and I love seeing so many more routines (plus I’ve been going back the next day to watch the apparatus feeds to catch athletes I want to see but weren’t shown in the main feed). And then I tune in that night and am not only disappointed with the editing choices (so few routines, shown late in the broadcast, continual back and forth with other sports), but the commentary… oh the commentary. It is actually painful. It wasn’t as annoying before, but now I have the comparison of only a few hours in between. They really, truly do suck.
There are much better people than Tim… John Roethlisberger for one! Tim is one huge negative nelly and he can’t get names right
Al’s comment during team prelims regarding catalina ponor “getting points for sexiness” was completely uncalled for, particularly in a sport that is still primarily for little girls.
I’m not sure it has anything to do with Tim, Al or Elfie’s personalities or qualifications, Rick. It’s that they deliver the kind of commentary NBC has clearly asked for – drama-mongering, repetitive, and grating. If I had a nickle for every time Tim said “OH BOY” or “that’s a disaster!” or “remember folks, the beam is only 4 inches wide!” I’d have a jar full. And NBC chooses to show only American gymnasts and their direct competitors, with a few others thrown in who seem to have been chosen to represent their entire country/team (example: showing Deng Linlin on bars and going on and on about how fabulous all Chinese are on bars… even though Linlin is actually somewhat labored on bars and better known for her beam and vault).
In an ideal world, I think Tim and Elfie could teach viewers a lot about each apparatus, the scoring system, different skills, and how each competitor has performed in the past. But instead, we get stale, uninformative, America-centric, occasionally rude or inappropriate commentary that drives gym fans (AND non-gym-fans!) crazy. Dvora was spot on. The way NBC screens gymnastics competitions is really hard to watch.
As a laywoman, I enjoy the BBC commentators, because they actually tell you what the skills are called! I learn a lot from them.
The American commentators are more like
Tim: That was a ginormous disaster!
Elfie: Where’s my gun?!
Elfie was awesome at one time, but is either getting old or cranky or has given up trying to get a word in over Dagget’s constant interruption. Yeah, he knows what he’s talking about but he’s been a little biased and is such a douche bag about it.
Christine Still, Mitch Fenner, Barry Davies…the gods of gymnastics commentary. That’s all….
I often wonder if it’s NBC pushing this type of coverage. Back in 2009, they Tim and Roethlisberger on the universal sports coverage, and the standard trio when they replayed for NBC. There was a noticeable difference between Tim on Universal Sports and NBC. On Universal Sports he was more intelligent and more informative. He still wasn’t as good as Shannon or BBC, but there was a large difference.
I also still have old tapes of the ’96 and 2000 Olympics. The trio was much more intelligent and much less biased then. I remember routines where the crowd would boo because at a lower score for an American, and Tim and Elfie would defend the score. “Oh it seemed low, but what you have to remember was her routine started with a lower score and there were some errors.” Now a days, I’m pretty sure they would be complaining about the judges instead.
Do you have a link to a nice piece of commentary from Christine Still, Mitch Fenner, Barry Davies?
Amanda Borden is my favorite commentator. Al is who brings down the NBC trio. Just Elfi and Tim would be so much more improved. Other sports have only two knowledgable commentators (love swimming’s Dan and Rowdy!) and I don’t get why NBC thinks Al is necessary.
Better: here’s a link to a full BBC broadcast, excellent coverage, great information, great ‘fluff’, and of course Christine, Mitch and Barry at their best…. click thorugh to watch the whole comp.
Some very international coverage in this actually.
It will be a nice walk down memory lane for you, Rick, with some nice coverage of Canadian gymnasts – not to mention some statements you’ll never hear on NBC, for example:
“Great though Retton’s victory was, it was devalued by the Soviet boycott” eeek :/ touchy!
Wonderful interviews with many greats from the past, and interesting to hear the all too familiar woes of code and judging….it seems thing never change.
In Australia we don’t normally get Roy and HG. We normally get Liz Chetkovich, who is far far worse than Tim, Elfie and Al on NBC.
Dan and Rowdy do make Swimming more exciting. Good point.
Why are we forgetting NBC’s contribution to gymnastics: the red, yellow, green score! What the? If I had a dollar for every time they had to explain its the wrong color… Such a collosal waste of time. As much as I liked Miller on the live feed, I was surprised at how much I liked the silence of the replay of the live feed.
If there was a way to marry live blogging with audio for the video feed we’d be in business. The live blogging on some of the gym sites have been the most informative and witty.
Tim’s fine. I can’t stand Al and Elfi, and I do understand it’s partly NBC’s fault. That said, they could do better. It’s like they are narrating a soap opera, not a sport.
The best commentary group we could hope for is Bart Conner, Kathy Johnson-Clarke, and yes, I’m going to say it, Blaine Wilson. The best men’s gymn commentary I’ve ever heard was at 2006 (or was it 2007) worlds, when Bart and Blaine talked it up. Educational for the audience AND tons of fun. Awesome.
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