Maybe it’s the baby boomer in me. With narrowcasting having taken firm hold, a part of me still missed the mass shared experience that used to rule the days when there were but three major television networks.
Nonetheless, there are those increasingly rare events that bring us back to an almost single audience orientation–the Super Bowl, of course, and most recently the Summer Olympics. These television events represent precious gold for the right advertisers. The Super Bowl and the Olympics carry ever-escalating price tags for ad time but it’s a premium which many are glad to pay in order to sponsor a mega-TV event during an era when audience fragmentation is the norm.
Indeed the Olympics and the Super Bowl seem to bring us closer together whether it be feelings of patriotism relative to our country’s performance in the former or plain, good old-fashioned water cooler talk the day after about the happenings at either event.
Yet rather than a warm glow, NBC’s coverage of the Games left me cold. Yes, we still reveled in the performance of the world’s athletes and the emotions they stirred in us. But it was what we didn’t see or hear much about–and the time during which we got to see the events themselves–which proved troubling. Indeed look what NBC did (particularly to those of us on the West Coast) when it regained the Nielsen-dominating power of yesteryear.
For one, there was no Michael Phelps live on air which would have been around 7 to 8 p.m. Los Angeles time. Instead broadcast of the swimming events was delayed three-plus hours. And while Phelps’ dominating performance may have killed much of the drama relative to the outcome of events in which he competed, any last vestige of suspense succumbed to NBC’s decision to tape delay in order to keep us watching well into the night. Even the Saturday evening when Phelps won his eighth Gold Medal was tape delayed out West. We thus lost the precious chance to witness history as it was being made because it was counter to NBC’s audience-building strategy.
And relative to what we didn’t see or hear much of, I find myself fondly reminiscing about Jim McKay, the great ABC sportscaster who became synonymous with the Olympics. We sadly lost McKay earlier this year and in Beijing we lost his journalistic spirit, one which would have put in more consistent, intelligent, poignant context the Tiananmen Square revolt without undermining the athletes and the spirit of the Games.
Last year the International Olympics Committee predicted that the Olympics in Beijing would be a force for good and spur on progress in human rights. Instead to keep a tight rein on its country’s image, the Chinese government on many reported occasions stepped up human rights abuse during the Games.
I think McKay would have shed more light on this. Instead NBC seemed content for the most part to play host to a celebratory coming out party for China.
Indeed we should be grateful that media has changed so that we’re no longer so dependent on but three major TV networks. NBC’s work at Beijing has stopped my waxing nostalgic about those good old days.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More