NBC's overnight ratings for the Opening Ceremony were down from four years ago. We'll start to see during the week if that's going to be a trend for Rio or not, but I do have a couple theories as to why. The first of which is that the tape delay generated a lot of ill-will, so people tuned out just out of spite. It didn't help that they talked down to the entire country when they said that they needed to put it in "context." Or that even though it was taped, it ended at 12:30 (when it was scheduled to end at 12), despite being heavily edited. And the number of commercials at the beginning was ridiculous.
As much as I try to defend NBC and their Olympic broadcasting strategy that has been proven to work time and again, I just can't get over how bad their Opening Ceremony coverage was. The "context" that they wanted to give us consisted of a split screen with that lady who directed the ceremony explaining things...in English that you could barely understand! They seriously would've been better off not saying anything. And with the amount of stuff that was cut out, any context was lost anyway. I saw pictures from the Opening Ceremony online and started counting off the stuff Americans didn't see...and it was a lot.
For example, did you know Kip Keino gave a speech after Thomas Bach gave him the Olympic Laurel? Likewise, the head of the organizing committee always gives a speech prior to the IOC President. Which NBC didn't show. (I'm assuming it's because the speech was in Portuguese.) They also continued their tradition of not showing the athletes' and officials' oaths (again, I'm assuming Portuguese was the reason). And, from what I could tell from the pictures that I saw, there was at least one part of the cultural presentation cut out.
Likewise, I knew that gold mirror thing behind the cauldron had some sort of meaning. It just took them until Saturday's primetime coverage to say what it was. Since Maracana's not the main stadium, they moved the cauldron. They did kinda what Vancouver did and set up the main flame in the center of the city during the Games. It's in front of a church in downtown Rio, in front of a similar mirror sculpture that's at the church. Would've been nice if NBC had said that!
Also, was there a need for all that filler? They came on the air at 7:30, but didn't start the Ceremony until 8...and had that ridiculous three-minute piece about women's gymnastics between commercial breaks for really no reason. NBC, we get it! You like women's gymnastics. We're watching the Opening Ceremony right now! (That interview with Ryan Seacrest on the preview show was bad enough.)
The one thing I did like was that they didn't skip any countries during the Parade of Nations. Usually, they'll go to commercial after one of the bigger nations and, when they come back, scroll through the teams they missed (so, good luck seeing any country between Canada and China). At least every country was given its proper due this time. I know that's been a complaint in the past, so it was good to see them listen to the criticism at least in one area. Although, they didn't need to constantly remind us that the countries were "out of order." Most of the time they don't march in English!
That brings me to my biggest gripe about the Opening Ceremony. Why were Meredith Vieira and Hoda Kotb there? Seriously, they brought absolutely nothing to the broadcast. The only part where you even need hosts during the Opening Ceremony is to talk about the 207 countries, but Matt Lauer was the only one of the three who contributed anything worthwhile. Meredith screwed up a bunch of country names, a few athlete names, and I'm pretty sure she got a couple facts wrong. And I think Hoda was drunk the entire time. (I didn't even get my quadrennial reminder of where the Central African Republic is!)
No complaints about Matt Lauer. He's done plenty of Opening Ceremonies before, and it showed. He did his homework, and he actually knew worthwhile things about the various delegations. You don't need a news guy at the Opening Ceremony, but it definitely helps when you have to talk about political issues in the various countries. The fact that Matt actually knows about sports, too (as he showed while filling in as primetime host in Sochi) is a plus.
With all that being said, it should've been Matt Lauer and Bob Costas. I was shocked when I saw Costas wasn't doing the Opening Ceremony, and I'm still kind of confused why he didn't. Don't you want your face of the Olympics to be the first one you see? And those interviews he did in the beginning were clearly pre-taped, so you can't use that as the reason. Yes, the IBC and the Maracana are far away from each other. So what? Did he really need to be in the IBC? You couldn't have one of the other Olympic hosts manning the studio so that you could actually have the two people who should've been calling the Ceremony both be at the Maracana?
I had originally planned to have this post be about the opening weekend of coverage as a whole, but I went on too long about the Opening Ceremony (sounds like a post for tomorrow). I will say this, though. Mike Tirico, in his first Olympic assignment, has clearly been the best studio host so far. And Ryan Seacrest is fine. Much better than I thought. The late night show is exactly what they want it to be, and he actually did his homework.
But I definitely have some thoughts on their coverage strategy that I've noticed throughout the opening weekend of the Games. More on that as the Olympics continue.
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