| brucekluger.com |
USA Today, February 5, 2002 America loses if Olympics are all about USA By Bruce Kluger
opening ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Olympics, broadcast from Sydney, Australia, specifically to watch the parade of athletes strutting into the stadium. I wasn't as interested in seeing the American team (though I wished them well) as I was in the Olympians from the tiny Caribbean country of Grenada. Since my daughters' births, both of their baby sitters have been Grenadan women; consequent-ly, our household had adopted the "Island of Spice" as our most favorite nation. I leaned forward as the alphabetical procession reached G—Germany, Ghana— and when Great Britain's team entered, I knew Grenada was coming up. And then... and then... Then a commercial for McDonald's. Or Ford. Or some product manufactured and sold in the Land of the Free. Needless to say, I was disappointed, especially when the broadcast returned after the commercial in time to catch the Hungarian team's entrance (we even missed Haiti). Was Team USA's entrance similarly interrupted by commercials? Are you kidding? That would be heresy. What followed for the next two weeks was the usual format for an American TV Olympic broadcast: dozens of hours of programming devoted primarily to Americans winning (and losing) medals, while the other nations of the world played Ed McMahon to Uncle Sam's Johnny. What a waste. As the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City approach, it's more important than ever for the broadcast industry—and particularly NBC, which is televising the Games—to resist using Salt Lake solely as a showcase for the prowess of our snow- blown superstars. Instead, the coverage both in the United States and abroad should embrace the international spirit of the Olympics. Especially in this calamitous year, viewers around the world need to see the Games as a celebration of the global community, in which Nords and Koreans and, yes, Iranians, stand shoulder to shoulder, wielding ski poles and hockey sticks, not M-16s. Granted, the terrorist attacks on America have put NBC in a bind, as the network searches for middle ground between feel-good globalism and coast-to-coast jingoism ("We're going to cover the Games as if they were a great coming together," says NBC Television Network president Randy Falco). But three days before the Games begin, it's apparent which sentiment will out-nudge the other at the wire. Promos for the Games swarm with images of Old Glory, as one of the network's theme songs—Neil Diamond's Plymouth-rock-and-roll anthem, America— pumps in the background. So much for the great coming together. I don't mean to sound like a wet winter blanket. Every sports fan knows that the Olympics is the prime time to don team logos, commandeer the La-Z-Boy and root the home team on to victory. But this year more than ever, the home team is Planet Earth. If the fallout from Sept. 11 has taught us anything, it's that America tends to look at the world through red-white-and-blue-colored glasses, touting the glories of her own culture at the expense of understanding the complexities—and richness—of others. In the case of the Winter Games, NBC should depict the proceedings not as a star- spangled sports bash, but as an intercontinental backyard jamboree that this time just happens to be in our backyard. Judging from past Olympic broadcasts, three areas could use a rethink: Athlete profiles. You know the drill: It's 10 minutes until the race, and rather than fill airtime with equal coverage of the competitors, the network cuts to a pre- packaged, gooey segment about the American entry. Let's change that. With nearly 100 countries participating, surely NBC can plumb the lineup for a more representative batch of bios. Like Hiroyasu Shimizu, a Japanese speedskater who committed himself to his sport to honor the memory his father, who died eight days before his 16th birthday; or Croatian Alpine skier Janica Kostelic, whose war- ravaged homeland considers her such a heroine that she's on a postage stamp; or Markku Uusipaavalniemi, a Finnish curler reputed to be his country's finest math student. The guy actually solved a Rubik's Cube in 25 seconds. Now that's must- see TV. Local color. If the coverage in Salt Lake is anything like that of previous Olympics, we can bank on round-the-clock Utah overload, with slick vignettes on everything from Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival to celebrity profiles on all 600 Osmonds. Big mistake. We're hosting this affair, remember—and as anyone who has thrown a dinner party can tell you, it's not polite to dominate the table talk with stories about how fabulously you've decorated your house. I'd rather sit through travelogues that transport me to a snowless African village, where Kenyan Richard Rono somehow found the inspiration to become an Olympic cross-country skier; or the paddy fields of Dalian in the People's Republic of China, home to biathlete (and farm girl) Yu Shumei. Don't kid yourself—there's a lot we could learn from a little televised globetrotting. Words from sponsors. No one knows how to pull patriotic heartstrings like the advertising industry, as it proved in the weeks after Sept. 11, when it ramped up the rampart-storming with flag- waving commercials by everyone from General Motors ("Keep America Rolling") to the New York Sports Club ("Keep America Strong"). Don't get me wrong: The ads were terrific, the country was truly hurting (still is), and the spots were just the shot in the arm we needed. But if the creative minds behind these ads could incite such a heady sense of national pride in a time of desperation, can't they call on the same magic to promote a new kind internationalism? Madison Avenue knows how to do this; after all, wasn't it Coke that taught the world to sing? In the end, economics will decide what we see in the Olympic broadcast and when we see it. TV programming is a knotty bit of business whose content and context are dictated by the generation of dollars, not krona or pesos or yen. But one can still hope that the Winter Games telecast will begin to reflect today's changing world, which has suddenly and inexplicably become both a larger and smaller place to live. Me, I'll be tuning in once again, rooting as always for the Caribbeans. Unfortunately, Grenada won't be participating in the Games this year. But there's always the Jamaican bobsledders. |
