Lots of weirdness, hype mark NBC's Olympics

Rumor has it the Winter Olympics end later this month. Of course, if you're Bryant Gumbel, they never happened at all. Meanwhile, Round 2 of midseason TV starts next week. Round 1? Never happened.

Television swims in the river of denial. (Bada-boom.) But as these Winter Games approach the butt-end of their days, it's time to ponder the past and future. NBC's Siege of Turin demanded a lot from viewers, and the e-mail overwhelmingly suggests you felt like prisoners.

There's no question it's been a weird Olympics. The gallant comeback of Chinese figure-skating pair Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao, Shani Davis' historic gold medal and the full-on joy of snowboarding were accompanied by Chad Hedrick's public rebuke of Davis, the empty seats visible at the periphery of NBC's cameras and Bode Miller's spiritually absent performance.

Perhaps the strangeness was pre-ordained. On HBO's Feb. 7 "Real Sports," host Gumbel opined that the next two weeks would be dead to him.

"Tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don't like 'em and won't watch 'em," he began. "In fact, I figure when Thomas Paine said, 'These are the times that try men's souls,' he must have been talking about the start of another Winter Olympics."

A few short sentences later, Gumbel reached his kicker:

"So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

American hypersensitivity to race created a furor around Gumbel's last statement. Frankly, it seems too undeveloped to merit such fire. The claim of "world's greatest athletes" could be disputed at any Olympics, and to take it at face value snubs the aspirational spirit.

"Are you angry, Shani?"

However true the low turnout of black athletes, it's also American-centric to ignore the rising tide of Asians at the Winter Games. That makes Gumbel no different from most U.S. sportscasters and left me wondering if he was just sniping at HBO rival and Turin anchor Bob Costas. I'd like to hear Gumbel's reply if NBC had offered him the job.

NBC also has had problems handling race. Following Davis' win in the 1,000-meter men's event, reporter Melissa Stark interviewed him. His terse, nearly rude replies provoked her to blurt out, "Are you angry, Shani?"

Yes, she asked the black man if he was angry. Perhaps NBC also could have flashed a clip of the famed "power salute" from the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Instead, the network did the CYA cha-cha: It later had a black reporter interview Davis. See, he's talking. They're talking. Everything's fine.

The only element omitted was that Costas' earlier remarks criticizing Davis for not joining the U.S. men's team pursuit may have affected his attitude toward NBC. Too bad Stark got punished. Sources in Turin say that right afterward, Davis spoke jovially to Dutch television.

More is less, Ludwig

In fact, everything is fine — for NBC.

While Turin has lower Nielsen ratings than the last few Winter Olympics, network owner General Electric won't fret too much. The average audience is better than fourth-place NBC would have gotten with its regular lineup, and the network has a slew of Olympic-related income through deals with other media providers such as Google, About.com, Dish Network and DirecTV.

Also to the bottom line, NBC pegged its ratings estimate low enough so that the network hasn't had to give advertisers additional free airings of ads to make up for smaller-than-expected viewing.

But let's posit that NBC executives care about a long-term erosion in ratings. I think they do, partly because this past week showed a willingness to let go of one bad habit, the star script.

So for the future that stretches to London in 2012, here are a few ideas:

• Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said, "Less is more." The reverse also is true. NBC's epic 8 p.m. to midnight airing thinned out the drama, especially combined with the rotational programming that bounced confused viewers from one heat or sport to another.

Next Olympics, NBC should broadcast 8 to 11 and trim the features and other padding.

• Similarly, the network needs to abandon that cluttered, clueless rotation. The foie-gras strategy — forcing us to consume more TV than we wanted — resulted in audience regurgitation.

Let us know when the skating or bobsledding is on. If the concern is lower ratings for, say, curling, then start the night earlier and put curling in the 7 to 8 p.m. slot.

• Improve the quality and consistency of commentary. The men's alpine skiing got great analysis; the bobsled got great screaming. For all the people assigned to figure skating, I still never understood the scoring system.

And why couldn't the multiple-image technology used for comparing downhill also compare luge runs? Spread the wealth like you did with that fabulous photography and HDTV.

• Don't push ads past viewer endurance. Although commercial minutes ran about the same as the last Olympics, it felt like more because of the fragmented presentation and many sponsorships.

P.S.: Marketers, take note. Not everything Olympian works. Chevron's figure-skating car was a hoot; Ronald McDonald on ice will never be Burger King in the end zone.

• Finally, why do the Olympics need an anchor? Sure, Bob Costas lends an erudite presence. But the job still seems trumped-up and his gravitas increasingly jars with NBC's entertainment slant.

Then again, they could always pair him with Bryant Gumbel.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com