Day: February 23, 2010

Grey Medal

NPR nails it:

The basic problem with NBC’s coverage is that they haven’t improved the fundamentals of the coverage in spite of massive changes in the way people take in content. The prime-time coverage is largely as it’s always been: a few events (including figure skating) are heavily showcased, a few other events (most skiing and speed skating fall into this category) are usually shown in an abbreviated format regular viewers instantly recognize as “USA-Plus” (meaning you see the Americans, plus a few other people who are relevant because they either do very well or wipe out spectacularly), and two events – hockey and curling – are shown as complete events, but they’re shoved off to cable.

Yep. They grew addicted to doing it this way when the Olympics were held on the other side of the world…all the events are happening at crazy hours relative to US television schedule so the delay-and-repackage thing feels less blatantly false…and but so why bother to change anything when the games are inconveniently held right in our neighborhood?

This goes to NBC’s entire approach to television of late: when in doubt, fall back on the old ways, the old models. Ride them to the bitter end and, probably, for a few years beyond the end. If an incremental change proves insufficient, retreat back to the older thing.
And this has always been their approach to the Olympics. They have three networks ostensibly available to them to broadcast the games and yet still manage to show a vanishingly small fraction of the actual sporting events. As NPR notes, complete games/events coverage is limited to some hockey and curling matches. Period. Add in more or less complete coverage of opening and closing ceremonies and you’ve got a “complete” events list that numbers four covering an event spanning two weeks. Unless, of course, you count the skating; there you get USA-first style coverage, with the Americans, the ultimate winners if they don’t happen to be ‘Merican, and one or two nobly failing foreigners to pad out the necessary space for commercials.
This is indefensible. Does the West Coast typically have to wait three hours to watch a highlights package of an East Coast Superbowl? Or, even more to the point, does the West Coast have to wait three hours to watch a highlights package of a Superbowl played in Los Angeles? Would that seem a reasonable approach for the TV production of that game? The Olympics are no different. Or shouldn’t be.
Last night, rather than show something, anything actually sports-related on the main prime-time broadcast, they spent an entire segment chatting with…swimmer Michael Phelps, who won’t be seeing any Olympic action for another two years. Clearly it was critical to get his thoughts in place of covering the actual games going on that day. Likewise the interminable recaps of whatever figure skating outrage is queued up for the day.

I’d wager that most people are past ready to dispense with the old model of tape delayed spoon feeding and endlessly narcissistic “Up close and personal” side stories that only serve to distract from whatever it is that’s going on in the first place. Such a broadcast could be accomplished with far fewer individuals on the payroll, and without weeks of run-up production time and the expense of same. Just place some cameras, hire some operators, and have a bit of talent stationed around to interpret where necessary. Honestly, it’s in your financial interest and that of your shareholders to run off as cheap a broadcast as you possibly can. Actually broadcasting Olympic sporting events is just how you do that.

I, for one, would pay to see it done that way.

Based not on a subjective assessment of the Tea Party’s viability or [NYT reporter David Barstow’s] opinion of its desirability but only on facts he knows about the state of politics and government since Obama’s election, is there any substantial likelihood of a tyranny replacing the American republic in the near future?

Jay Rosen
asking an excellent question about the editorial content (or lack thereof) in this piece. The ongoing and steadfast refusal to reflect objective reality, even when uncomfortable, is a major problem.

Is the world round? Opinions differ.

Pity Poor Iowa

Iowa representative Steve King thinks the terrorist attack on the IRS building in Austin was completely justifiable, perhaps even legitimate:

KING: It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back.

As with returning the colonies to Her Britannic Majesty, nothing would make me happier than exempting Iowa from compliance with the IRS and from the painful reality of receiving any of those pesky federal dollars:

Iowa taxpayers receive more federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, Iowa citizens received approximately $1.10 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 24th nationally and represents a rise from 1995 when Iowa received $1.06 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (then ranked 26th nationally). Neighboring states and the amount of federal spending they received per dollar of federal taxes paid were: Minnesota ($0.72), Wisconsin ($0.86), Illinois ($0.75), Missouri ($1.32), Nebraska ($1.10), and South Dakota ($1.53).

Seriously. Let’s get the “thumb” out of their back once and for all. I’m sure they’ll be much happier. Any other states care to apply? Maybe they’d like to watch the example of Iowa first.

Code Brown: PAM

ryking reports that:

the Teabaggers were going apeshit over Brown’s vote for the jobs bill on Twitter and I almost wet myself laughing at the vitriol. I guess these imbeciles thought he’d vote like a typical GOP automaton. News flash, imbeciles: Brown knows he won a protest vote in Massachusetts; he wants to be re-elected after he serves out the last two years of Ted Kennedy’s term so he can’t — and therefore won’t — march in goosestep, er, LOCKSTEP, with the America-hating GOP.

I wish I thought this was an accurate analysis. Unfortunately, I’d say this is an example of the GOP leadership knowing that a lockstep vote here, coming hot on the heels of the Brown mania, would be an all-too-clear and inescapable indictment of their current anti-democratic ways.
Of a piece with that, repeatedly bottling up jobs bills just isn’t going to play for any of them. Thus, Brown is given the go-ahead to vote for cloture, and a few of the moderate GOPers also scurry in to join him. The key vote, though, comes later: when the bill will pass 98-0 or some-such. The GOP Senate knows well that people don’t pay attention to anything, and certainly not the vagaries of cloture votes. No price will be paid for their delaying or otherwise weakening bills; after all, the GOPers can still just run on having voted “for” it in the end. They know that neither will their enablers in the media ever bring up the inconvenient cloture votes nor will the Democrat ever stoop to being so impolite as to mention such a thing in public.

It’s basically stimulus 2.0: take all the glory of anything that works or turns out to be popular, while doing none of the actual policy work needed to bring it about. In fact, you fight all that every step of the way and use the legislative mayhem to further inculcate the sense that DC is fundamentally off the rails. Rest easy that nobody on any side of the aisle or in the media will say or do anything about it. It’s an entirely cost free position that, so far anyway, is working like a charm.

So, no. I don’t feel the need to advance our Code Brown independent vote counter past 0. That happens in the unlikely event of his taking a difficult stand, one clearly against the leadership’s wishes. When FOXnews hollers about a vote, or he’s forced to apologize for some perceived slight, or prostrate himself before Rush: then and only then the 0dometer will advance. And sorry, it’s just not going to happen.