During the Parade of Nations that marked the opening of this year’s 2020 Tokyo Olympics, an NBC commentator acknowledged the entrance of the German team by noting the two Summer Games that their country has hosted: 1936 and 1972. In other words, Hitler and a terrorist massacre.
Bad, it turns out. You really have to feel a little sorry for NBC and its snakebit Games. The event is a year late thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. There’s a troublesome time differential that makes maintaining suspense until prime time usually impossible. There’s an often-depressing onscreen atmosphere—much of fencing, boxing and tennis seem to be taking place in gloomy warehouse spaces, dimly lighted and virtually unoccupied .
The downbeat mood is genuine. NBC has not had it easy. And many of the problems have been beyond its control. However: The most memorable moment of these Olympic Games will be the decision by Simone Biles to withdraw from most events . And that will have ramifications for many TV Olympics to come. The viewing public has been made aware that the pressure on athletes comes from many directions and, rightly or wrongly, the interview process as exercised by NBC will increasingly be seen as not just invasive but destructive.
The network, which has been broadcasting the Summer Olympics since 1988 and has the rights through 2032, has always looked to impose additional drama on an event that’s already beyond dramatic, by latching onto the personalities who have the most mainstream appeal and the most sentimental stories. Getting “up close and personal”—a coinage, as it happens, of the ’70s Roone Arledge-era ABC, when that network aired the Olympics—is supposed to humanize the athletes.