Pozdrav
Vlada
Where is the World? Not on NBC!
"It was said that Atlanta '96 will be the Olympic Games of the
North Americans. And the television station NBC that exclusively
broadcasts the Games in the United States is making sure that this
is the case. With only seven and a half hours dedicated to
Atlanta daily -- early in the morning there are a few hours of
reruns -- the Americans see fewer events than in Europe. And what
they do see seems like a national competition, where foreign
competitors are either ignored or criticized. NBC paid 456
million dollars (56,000 million pesetas) for the rights to the
games. [...] In swimming the camera never focused on a single
foreign competitor even in the moments before they entered the
water [...] And up until now not a single soccer game, the most
popular sport in the world, has been shown." Juan Cavestany
A High-Tech Madhouse
"Carefully, we sit down in front of one the 2,000 screens
that IBM installed for the Olympic Games to find out
wrestling results. If nothing works at these games then at
least the monolith Ei-Bie-Em should. We click . . . only
to find a blank blue screen. A colleague from Agence
France Press says he had never thought that he would
once again have to copy down the results by hand from
a bulletin board. We imagine what would happen if the
games took place somewhere in the Third World or in the
East . . . they wouldn't be able to do it with their
antiquated typewriters and their damned indifference.
But here we are in the high-tech myth of America and
one must remain humble in the face of a myth: It can't be
that bad, can it? They claimed that such a network was
the only one of its kind anywhere. And how come they
promised that every result would be available
everywhere within two minutes?
Chaos, Live from Atlanta
"Are we really in the U.S.? Were it not for the ketchup and the
air conditioning, one would really feel as if being at home --
traffic jams are the same, the bureaucracy is the same.
However there is more: The computer network simply doesn't
work. Everybody agrees that the Atlanta games suffer from the
worst organization since World War II. Results are so late and
inaccurate it's a mystery. The Eurovision station and the
Japanese have asked for their money back, claming that Bill
Payne, in charge of the organization, is totally incompetent. To
top it all off, in the Land of Television, TV does everything but
its purpose. What on Earth is NBC doing? Why does it show
images of Schwarzenegger's restaurant, of ice-cream vendors,
and of the Atlanta subway during the most important sporting
events? It's hard to believe. As a Japanese journalist said: 'It is
as if we had come to Italy and found the pasta not al dente.' "
Atlanta Reacts to International Press
"Many Americans feel personally insulted by the large scale
criticism of the Olympic games. Atlanta's Country Radio Station
Kicks 101.5 reacted angrily to the negative publicity and
specifically addressed the Germans. "They whine the most. No
one athlete has been shot by a terrorist in Atlanta. All I can
say is: 1972." The announcer went on to tell journalists
offensively that if they don't like it here they should go home."
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Vladica Trenkic | Numerical Modelling Group, | Tel: +44 (0)115 9515151x2055 | Department of Electrical | Fax: +44 (0)115 9515616 | & Electronic Engineering, | E-mail: vmt@eee.nott.ac.uk | University of Nottingham, | http://www.nml.eee.nott.ac.uk/~vmt | United Kingdom | -----------------------------------------------------------------------