Nbc: Coverage You Loved To Hate Numbers May Affirm Network’s Philosophy, But What Else Was On TV?

Twenty years ago, Faye Dunaway uttered a line in the movie “Network” that just as easily could have been the mantra for NBC Sports in its coverage of the Atlanta Olympics.

“All I want out of life is a 30 share and a 20 rating,” Dunaway, playing a neurotic female TV executive, purred to William Holden, warning her colleague what their impending relationship might be like.

In many ways, NBC Sports executives were using the same rationale to justify their Olympic coverage philosophy. Never mind the critics, the sports purists, all those people who preferred action to sappy features and national anthems other than the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

We’ve seen the research, and we’re sticking to the script, NBC insisted, and almost every day they cited huge ratings and audience share to anyone who dared question their methods.

Now the numbers are in, and like Dunaway, the broadcasters at 30 Rock got exactly what they wanted out of life - an average of a 21.6 rating and a 41 share of the audience over the 2 weeks, a whopping 25 percent increase over Barcelona.

They were the most-watched event in TV history with 206.5 million viewers. The 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, attracted 204 million.

The ends clearly justified the means, and yet, I suspect most of us have had a love-hate relationship with these Games. We were watching in mega-numbers, but then again, we had no choice, save for local news and cable shows limited to 2 minutes of action in each of only three newscasts a day. And so, we offer a sampling of things we loved about the Olympics on TV and a few we hated.

Love: Anything live, particularly the coverage of Michael Johnson’s historic 200-meter run Thursday and the relays Saturday, even without Carl Lewis.

Hate: Plausibly live, as in videotape presented as if it is live, without a disclaimer. So what if research shows few care? It’s the right thing to do.

Love: The emergence of women’s team sports, partly the result of Title IX legislation all those King Football schools have opposed for years.

Hate: The fact NBC virtually ignored women’s soccer and softball, giving us videotaped look-ins when live action, even in small doses, clearly was possible. NBC’s miniscule goals-only coverage of Nigeria’s historic men’s soccer victory over Argentina also was inexcusable.

Love: Bob Costas, Greg Gumbel and even Jim Lampley and Hannah Storm in the anchor chairs. All kept hype to the minimum, asked reasonable questions during interviews and provided context to what viewers were about to see or had just witnessed.

Hate: “The Today Show,” at least in the week before the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park. It was gushy, mushy TV, essentially a 2-hour all-American infomercial. They got back into the news and information mode post-bomb.

Love: Dive-cam and Rail-cam, two of NBC’s technical innovations that gave viewers fabulous angles on the marquee events at the pool and Olympic Stadium.

Hate: All those tight closeups of sobbing athletes.

Love: Coverage by ESPN. Despite not being a rights-holder, the all-sports network always seemed to have the big stars when it counted.

Hate: Only highlights of Lindsay Davenport’s women’s gold medal tennis match, though they did show longer portions of action the next day.

Love: Staying with live action for a good portion of Andre Agassi’s gold medal match, especially with bubbly Bud Collins handling play-by-play and Mary Carillo on the analysis.

Hate: NBC focusing frequently on Agassi’s fiancee, Brooke Shields, who just happens to have a new show coming up this fall on guess which network?

Love: The 45-minute piece produced by Lisa Lax on five American Olympians - Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Wilma Rudolph, Rafer Johnson and Muhammad Ali - from the 1960 Rome Games. It ran uninterrupted by commercials Sunday afternoon and ought to be repeated in prime time. Ali’s appearance at halftime of the Dream Team’s gold medal game to get a replacement gold medal for the one he either lost or threw into the Ohio River, depending on who you believe.

Hate: NBC’s roster of new fall shows … the IBM fencing commercial … the Nike ad that has one athlete foaming at the mouth and ends with a bloody boxing mouthpiece flying through thin air.

Love: The women’s Dream Team, and particularly NBC showing most of the championship game victory over Brazil.

Hate: The men’s Dream Team, an idea whose time is past.

Love: The chance to get a life again after must Olympic viewing morning, noon, night, late night and weekends.

Hate: Four long years to Sydney.