Dick Ebersol Out at NBC

Ah, Dick Ebersol was okay at SNL. Now Jean Doumanian, on the other hand...

And the Conan-Leno fiasco? There are a lot of executives at NBC that should have egg plastered on their faces for how that was handled.

 

Seriously, if you showed it live at, say 5 a.m., what kind of audience are you going to get? Certainly not enough to counterbalance the enormous rights fees.

I can see doing it both ways, once live and once in prime time, when the Games are held in a location not TV friendly.

Sometimes I wonder if the price tag is too steep, but it's still the greatest show in sports.

 

If people want to see the events that badly, they'll get up and watch them - at whatever time. The rest of the world does that and doesn't bark loudly.

When the World Cup was in Korea and Japan in '02, I was up to watch the matches. Other soccer fans of other countries did the same. Mark, if people are that interested in the Olympics, the World Cup, Cricket or one of George Carlin's suggested demonstration sports, they'll tune in live if reasonably possible.

Dick Ebersol may think it all has to be pre-packaged, overproduced and tweaked within an inch of its life. He's wrong. Goodbye and good riddance.

 

More to the point, they showed the matches and not some bastardized mashup of Biography Channel and Lifetime.

 

Ebersol was not a friend of the diehard sports fan. He single handedly wrecked the joy of the Olympics for anyone who was old enough to know better.

 

A-friggin-men, Boom.

 

Two things about the Olympics (and don't take this as a defense of Ebersol, who has always struck me as a douche):

1. Realize that the networks do not, and will not ever, treat them as sports competition. They are not aiming for the sports audience. They are aiming to steal viewers from "Two and a Half Men" or "House" or whatever else is on. If they only get sports fans to watch they will lose millions and millions of dollars. More than anything they are aiming for women, which is why you'll see figure skating or gymnastics exhibitions instead of actual competitions.

2. The current NBC setup is much, much better than we've ever had, and to suggest otherwise is absurd. They spread the competition over about 6 networks now. You could see damn near every match of team handball, or curling, or whatever you want -- you just have to switch to CNBC or Bravo or something to see it. Yeah, the evening stuff on the network kind of sucks, but it's a small fraction of the overall coverage.

 

Let me guess. You saw him at a fundraiser and he was REALLY POLITE to you and you ENDED UP SELLING COFFEE MAKERS TO NBC and EBERSOL WAS SO NICE and you have NO IDEA how anyone could ever think ANYTHING OTHERWISE.

Well, he bullies and screams at and pushes--literally--people in the control truck during the Olympics and terrorizes the minimum wage teenaged baggers at the supermarket in bumfuck Connecticut. OK?

 

AGREED. The Olympics and, say, the National Football League are different audiences. The amount of money spent on Olympic rights fees demands maximum return from advertising in prime time. That's when you get the biggest audiences. When possible, NBC has tried to get events scheduled so they can be shown in prime time (which is why figure skating had to start at 4 p.m. PST in Vancouver). But, alas, that's not always possible.

There are far more events shown now than ever before, much of it live. But you can't take you highest-drawing sports (figure skating, gymnastics, swimming, track and field, etc.) and pawn them off on some cable outlet at 5 a.m. It just won't make money that way. The other issue is that some events are so long and drawn out when shown live that they take forever. You can't, for example, spend 6 hours to cover a cycling road race. That has to be condensed and shown on tape (so should the marathon... most boring event in the world). Olympic broadcasting today is far more about packaging than just pointing a camera at some event and having a commentator talk about it.

 

Yeah, but does that make him better or worse than Girardi? Sounds worse. Girardi just blows of small timers (though sometimes in a rude manner).

And Ebersol might be the biggest asshole on the planet. I don't know. But when you base your opinion on, "I have heard stories," forgive me if I don't put him on the top (or is it the bottom) of my list.

You heard? From who? What's the proof? Did you check it out? Did you talk to anyone else who witnessed these events? Does anyone say anything nice about Ebersol or is it acknowledged by everyone that he's a flaming asshole.

And, in your opinion, who are the good guys? You've made me so cynical. Is everybody an asshole or are there some good guys left?