For HDTV, Athens 2004 was the killer app

by Gary Dretzka

Throughout most of the last 20 years’ worth of Summer and Winter Olympic Games, I’ve struggled to find enough good reasons to pay more than passing attention to what’s transpiring on the playing fields of some city too remote or expensive for me to ever visit. I enjoy watching sports on television as much as the next guy, but, like uncounted others, had become unnerved by the blind national chauvinism of the commentators, tear-jerking up-close-and-personal features, plugs for upcoming network programming and the seeming inability of the world’s best figure skaters and gymnasts to complete a routine without falling on their butts or failing to “stick” a landing.

Moreover, after the Internet came of age, it became impossible to ignore the results of events that wouldn’t be broadcast by the networks for several more hours. Like no-hit games in baseball, world records in track and field are meant to be savored in real time.

It seemed a rather silly game to play, especially at the behest of network executives who wouldn’t attend a ballgame if their seats weren’t at courtside or in a luxury box.

But, that’s old news. I’m not the one who has to convince advertisers to cough up the bread necessary to support wall-to-wall coverage. Instead, this year, I discovered an entirely new way to stimulate interest in the Olympics: HDTV.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, the Dretzkas have succumbed to the ultimate temptation, a spanking-new 34-inch Sony of unknown gender. Not that we intended to make such an investment when endeavored to find a smallish TV/DVD combo for the bedroom, over the weekend, but the cornucopia of Olympic events delivered by NBC Universal’s disparate channels trumped our long reluctance to go digital. That, and a price point that finally seemed reasonably reasonable.

After covering the consumer-electronics industry for nearly 15 years — including a decade’s worth of CES conventions — I’d all but given up on the possibility that I’d be able to report such a thing. As more cynical observers than I have quipped, “HDTV is the technology of the future … and always will be.” I really didn’t see this one coming.

While the FCC, Congress and broadcast industry have labored mightily to capsize the ship bringing digital television to the masses, the producers of consumer-electronics appliances have filled the leadership vacuum with products that offer viable alternatives to the perfectly acceptable analog equipment in every American home. Anyone willing to spend a few hours surfing the Web or bouncing around the mall now can find at least two generations of high-quality brand-name digital- and HDTV-ready sets, some well under the $1,000 threshold. Merchants previously hamstrung by the embarrassingly steep cost of digital television now can promote deeply discounted prices on retired models, or try to convince customers that a newer, more expensive unit would be the better choice.

More importantly, perhaps, the set-top boxes needed to translate digital signals into high-def images also have come way down in price. Retailers can hook consumers up with satellite and cable providers whose digital transmissions merely require a receiver that will set them back $10 a month to rent or $200-300 to purchase. In many small- to medium-sized markets, the only way to experience any kind of digital television is via satellite or cable.

(HDTV Lesson 1: Satellite services offer slightly better resolution, but fewer local channels than cable providers, as compressed signals are still the norm in the wired world. The purchase of special boxes and antennas are required for free, over-the-air digital service, but only in markets were local stations have already made the necessary conversion.

(HDTV Lesson 2: Anyone holding out for those snazzy wall-mounted plasma-screen units to suddenly become affordable may have to wait for the 2012 edition of the Summer Games. Our new set is as deep as it is wide, and weighs a ton. But, it works.)

After experiencing some of the usual trauma associated with installing advanced electronics gear in our already-gadget-filled household — including some wiring miscues by our “professional” installer, and being told that we might live to close to Mt. Wilson to actually receive local HD signals — we finally were ready to enter the 21st Century. From all early indications, we made the right decision.

Simply put, the Olympics look terrific on wide-screen HDTV. The enhanced depth-of-field adds texture to what previously was a rather flat at-home experience, while the athletes themselves are made to look more … well, human. That’s the only way to describe the novelty of being able to glean every rippling muscle, purplish bruise and speck of freshly applied glitter on the body of a participant. HD also makes the deciphering of tattoos a much easier task.

Athens, too, has been given a remarkably lustrous new profile. Absent the smog and traffic jams, the city’s intimate relationship with myth and antiquity is brought squarely to the forefront of NBC’s coverage. The colors of the sea are remarkably brilliant, especially when put in contrast to the rugged cliffs and harsh landscape. The ruins, churches and windmills also are shown to their best effect.

Coverage of the Games themselves typically has begun in the wee hours of the morning with live feeds from Greek venues, which can be seen on MSNBC. Event coverage also can be found at various times of the day on NBC, CNBC, Bravo, USA, Telemundo and a channel dedicated to HD. For once, there’s rarely a dull or uneventful moment.

Over the last four years, it seemed, the only people who had confidence in the Games turning out this well (that’s me, knocking on wood) were the Greeks themselves. Some high-profile athletes had smugly turned down the opportunity to participate, using the very real threat of terrorism as a convenient excuse, and the American media (newspapers, especially) seemed to be going out of their way to piss all over the government’s commitment to excellence.

In doing so, pundits used every cheap metaphor on their laptop’s memory string to belittle the country and its people. They questioned the work ethic of the average Greek, as well as the government’s financial standing, security preparations and the admittedly miserable summer heat. One enterprising reporter even found a quorum of American tourists willing to whine on camera about the city’s ancient sanitation system, which required them to be careful of what they flushed down the commode (only in North America is access to modern plumbing considered to be a God-given right).

In doing so, they effectively scared off the tens of thousands of western tourists who might have wanted to attend the Olympics and, perhaps, drop a few more Yankee dollars on cruises to the islands. Over the opening weekend, when the world’s gymnasts were greeted by row-upon-row of empty seats (the balcony was filled, we learned later), it gave the press an excuse to say, “We told you so.”

NBC’s Bob Costas, himself of Hellenic heritage, knew that the empty seats didn’t reflect the Greek peoples’ disdain for the Olympics, and he explained how a religious holiday and traditional vacation patterns might have caused those expensive seats to go unsold. By the time the first photos of the half-empty arena were splashed on the cover of the morning papers, however, the damage was done. Easy jokes flowed like ouzo at an Orthodox wedding.

The point Costas didn’t make effectively enough, however, was that the poor attendance was a product of the American media’s toxic promotion of a self-fulfilling prophesy. The best seats in any Olympics venue go first to advertisers and other financial backers, cronies of IOC members and vacation packagers. The cheap seats are reserved for the true fans. The packagers were the interests hit hardest by the fear campaign, and their tickets were for the most visible seats. If the fans in the balcony had been allowed to fill those seats from Day One, there would have been one less gag for the late-night comedians to exhaust.

Three days into the Games, it became clear that security was quickly becoming a secondary issue to those people who braved the journey to Athens. From half a world away, it looked like one big party, with the drinking and dancing continuing into the wee hours (as is normal in Athens). The fans were free to wave the flags of their country, sing along to their national anthems and challenge the competency of the judges, who, before the gymnastics fiasco, tried to steal a gold medal from swimmer Aaron Peirsol.


I‘m just guessing here, so don’t hold me to this next theory. Instead of catching the next plane to Athens, I suspect that a significant number of. those fans frightened off by the Cassandras in the press elected to compensate by driving to their local Best Buy or Circuit City. At roughly the same price as a round-trip ticket, they could purchase the next best thing to being there, and keep it around for football season and the World Series.

With the Games in high gear, and Greece off their shit list, the pundits quickly turned their attention to more pressing issues, like Gail Devers’ fingernails; the appearance of women athletes at Olympia for the first time in history; and the arrogance of athletes, including the winner of the women’s shot-put, at Olympic, who didn’t think they’d be caught with drugs in their system. Many gave President Bush a pass as he took credit for the Iraqi soccer team’s early success, even when the players’ themselves were condemning the American occupation.

Without the occurrence early on of any prophesized terrorist attacks, broadcasters and fans, alike, breathed a huge sigh of relief and turned their attention to the sporting events, individual athletes and Greece’s place in history and tourism. I didn’t hear anyone apologize to the Greek people for disparaging their intentions or threatening their ability to sell tickets. But, then, who would expect them to offer regrets?

This was the first Olympics in memory where I felt as if newspaper coverage was superfluous to what was being seen on the screen. There was plenty to see on TV, at all hours of the day, and the Internet wasn’t holding back on reporting winners and losers. Unless the print reporters’ work was going up on their paper’s websites as soon as it was filed, there was no way for them to catch up with their electronic competition. Worse, NBC was getting excellent stuff from newspaper correspondents, who were only too happy share the opinions with a national audience. Also for the first time in memory, the images I was seeing on my television were infinitely more compelling than anything being written about them by even the best scribes.

This might have as much to do with the decline in the overall quality of newspaper writing, as the improvement in the pictures rendered on my 1080i monitor. Or, it might suggest that newspaper writers are getting only as much access to the athletes — or considerably less — as their electronic peers, and there’s only so much information to go around. Or sports editors are assigning the same feature-oriented crap they’ve seen for the last 30 years on television, thanks to the vision of Roone Arledge.

This isn’t to say that NBC did everything right, or even came close to the bulls-eye. I tended to switch channels when I sensed the arrival of a sappy profile, or another story about how hard work triumphed over some personal disaster. Neither do I care much for the predictably goofy look-at-me antics of the “Today” crew, or the hourly medal count. Way too much attention is paid to the minutiae surrounding the American delegates, but, unless I’m imaging things, the rah-rah stuff did seem to have been dialed down from previous Games.

Fact is, NBC didn’t have to do much more than sit back and let its technology do all the heavy lifting. This mostly came in the form of super-slow-motion photography, ubiquitous video cameras, hypersensitive microphones and computers that allowed commentators to know what was going on everywhere else, instantaneously. There also seemed to be a general willingness to share information over the airwaves and Internet, instead of trying to keep their audiences in the dark until the absolute last minute of prime time.

The participants provided all the necessary drama, of course, and very little of it had to be goosed by hyperactive reporting.

The trials, tribulations and triumphs of Paul Hamm, for example, could be read on his face from 10,000 miles away, with the sound muted. While no glitzy adjectives were needed to amplify the theatrical nature of his journey, NBC’s high-def images greatly enhanced the at-home experience.

Anyone who was watching the early rounds of Monday’s gymnastic events, on whichever of the NBC properties that was carrying it, might have correctly predicted the revolt that erupted later that night, during the men’s horizontal-bar finals. Several hours before the crowd in Athens instinctively did what lovers of figure skating have wanted to do for years — force the judges the correct their mistakes immediately after they‘re made — the commentators reported that the natives were getting unusually restless. In effect, they declared, en masse, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it, anymore.” If a Greek had been the victim of such obvious thievery, the boneheaded judges might have been lynched from the nearest olive tree.

Neither could many contemporary commentators adequately amplify with words Hamm’s painfully obvious agony, as he waited for the booing to subside, or the dignity of Alexei Nemov as he tried to calm the storm. That Hamm was able to perform so magnificently after a 10-minute delay — which, to me, seemed twice as long — only made the storyline that much more compelling. And, the crowd’s ferocity rendered the NBC commentators nearly speechless, as well.

The thunderous booing, along with Nemov and Hamm’s reaction to it, dwarfed all the weeping and wailing over doping, and the inability of America’s so-called Dream Team to play down to their own lowered expectations. It was a spontaneous event, and NBC was smart enough to let it play out for as long as it took, without a lot of speculative blather or the kind of impromptu editorializing one would expect from a Howard Cosell.

By expanding the breadth of the coverage, NBC covered the gamut of sporting events from the sublime to the ridiculous. The women’s marathon was given the attention it so richly deserved, without also punishing the fans of such marginal hobby-sports as synchronized platform diving, badminton and flat-water kayaking, whatever that is.


Sadly, the same can’t be said about beach volleyball, which is to the rest of the Games what ESPN2 is to ESPN. It’s fun to watch for about five minutes, but, without the bikinis, backers of the so-called sport would be hard-pressed to find a home for it on TV, alongside tractor-pulls, cheerleading competition and celebrity poker. If the editors of Sports Illustrated, and the beer companies that advertise in that once-venerable magazine, had been allowed to invent a game specifically for the Olympics, it would be women’s beach volleyball. (On the men’s side, the game provides a way-station for former collegiate volleyball and basketball stars on the road to retirement.)

Naturally, it’s a big hit (I‘m guessing NBC will build a reality show around the American gals, and slot it after “The Apprentice”). Fortunately, for viewers with cable, at least, there are other options available to them, and only one of them will cost an arm and a leg.

The bad news for those of us who’ve already made the sacrifice of a limb or two, it quickly becomes clear that the purchase of a set, box and antenna is only the first step in a much longer journey. To take full advantage of the HD technology, consumers also will be forced to trade up to video recorders that can handle the higher resolution, as well as DVD burners and other high-tech gizmos. Finding a home for a half-dozen new remote-control devices isn’t a picnic, either.

In 10 years, it’s entirely possible that the consumer-electronics industry will look back on Athens 2004 with the same awe once reserved for “Bonanza” and “Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” by proponents of color television. The halo effect could mean exactly that much to the future success of digital TV, which has been waiting for just such a moment to arrive.

If I’m wrong, however, and the whole industry goes down the toilet tomorrow … well, who cares? My prediction will be every bit as memorable as the name of the Korean gymnast who was cheated out of the gold medal awarded to Paul Hamm. What, you forgot it … already?

Gdretzka@yahoo.com