Time on the roundup - twelve o'clock
I went to Dejah's site (which I visited on Tuesday) to see if she had coverage of today's ladies' program yet, and I noticed that she answered a question that I had previously asked. Here's part of her answer, which illustrates the similarities and differences between Russian and American Olympic coverage:
I am watching the Russian Sports channel RTR on webcast. In Russia, skating is a popular sport, just like here. Except unlike the US, skating gets some respect in Russia. They treat it like a "real sport." RTR runs most skating events live, often in their entirety. A subscription is $9/month, payable via Paypal, and this was the best $9 I ever spent on skating.
Though the announcers yammer on—some things don't change form American TV—it's all in Russian, which I know very little of. It's easy to tune out....
Most interesting, perhaps, is the post skating mike-in-the-face interviews. Of course, they only seem to interview the Russians, but that's okay. Russian TV is even MORE "homer" and Russophile than US TV is Ameri-centric. It's nice to see though, that skaters who stumble or are stiff and nervous when speaking English, actually smile and are very personable when speaking their own language....
The other thing I LOVE about Russian TV is that they don't think the viewer is too stupid to understand figure skating. When Marinin did that scary axel lasso lift in the long program, they did a replay and you could hear Anton talking, probably about the ice spray flying and the insecurity of Marinin's footwork in the lift. The showed Marinin's FEET, which in ALL the times ABC and NBC have showed that horrific accident when Totmianina fell out of the lasso lift, NONE of them have showed WHY she fell... Marinin's feet. And it goes on. Russian TV does replays of landings, close up so we can see if they are two footed.
I've also had an opportunity to get another perspective on US TV coverage:
A couple of nights ago I had the opportunity to meet high school exchange students from Germany, Finland, and Japan. I had an opportunity to ask them what they thought of Olympic coverage, and the German student (the most vocal of three) expressed clear displeasure at the paucity and quality of coverage here in the U.S.
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