The coverage of the 2010 Vancouver games is hands-down the best television in the history of Olympics broadcasting. There, I said it.
No, I’m not talking about the drama on the screen. Nor Rod Black working himself into a lather at every event he covers, or Rob Faulds feigning interest in flabby spandex-wearing bobsledders whipping down an ice ditch at the speed of sound, or Brian Williams waxing poetic about small-town athletes being the fiber that connects a nation whilst killing airtime between events.
No ma’am/sir, it is the five-channel High Definition television buffet served up by the CTV Globemedia empire. Say what you will about this ginormous media leviathan, not only do they own the coverage of these games, they’ve outdone any Olympics coverage I have ever watched. Here’s the list of options I have to choose from, (with a nod to Videotron): CTV HD, TSN HD, TSN2 HD, Sportsnet HD and APTN HD. I’m not even including the piteous NBC HD coverage which, by comparison, makes CTV's 15 minute Sportsnight look like Gone With The Wind.
Now perhaps I exaggerate a wee bit, but you have to understand that I grew up in the seventies when it was not uncommon for households to have only one (yes, one) television, and for the first part of the decade it was probably black and white. You were lucky if you got two channels and could actually tell the difference between cross-country skiing and figure skating. Frequent adjustments to the antenna were needed and every time an airplane flew over the screen would turn to fuzz and occasionally the image of dancing fat guys in lederhosen would emerge briefly from the snow.
Every time the Olympics are on, I find my eyes glued to every second of television coverage. I don’t really know why. I can’t think of any other time when I would be interested in cross-country ski shootouts or wheel-less skateboarders tumbling through the air over a giant snow-covered culvert. Perhaps I’m a bit obsessed with the potential of my home and native land winning a medal, but not always. I’ll sit through a hockey game between Belarus and Latvia just because I can. It’s weird, I know.
If Olympics coverage were junk food I’d weigh about 600 pounds by now. The visual feast of the Vancouver games is bounteous, and yet I still can’t get enough.
Tonight, Canada and Russia will face off in a hockey game that will likely break the record for the most superlatives ever used in a sports broadcast. The host server for Thesaurus.com will crash as commentators, insiders, experts and analysts try to squeeze every ounce of hype and drama from an event that already requires no further description. Expect a torrent of cliché statements like gut-check, must-win, the pride of a nation on the line.
Yada, yada. For me, the media Godzilla that is the Vancouver Olympics will rumble on regardless of the outcome of tonight’s game. With apologies to a hockey-mad nation, chances are I’ll be back on my sofa tomorrow gorging myself on whatever other frost-covered sport I stumble upon... ooo, downhill skeet-shooting... tasty.
Besides, the Stanley Cup is only a couple of months away.
Go Canada.
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