What a pity that CTV rather than CBC, got the rights to show the Vancouver Olympics on Canadian television. Their coverage, mostly fine for individual events, is pretty dismal in most other respects. I never seem to know what the programming is going to be. Maybe there's a nice wrap-up of the day's or the previous day's events but, watching on and off all day most days, I haven't been able to find it, apart from a long-winded series of interviews and comments early on. The website has a nice feature showing the events and what channel they're on but the channel seems to be missing or wrong some of the time, and there's nothing to tell you about wrap-ups or other features, and announcements on the TV are few and far between.
Even worse, a large segment of the programming is devoted to sophomoric commentary and discussion in the studio and outside, by reporters who seem more interested in showing off their own personality and making stupid jokes than in informing and entertaining the audience. There are very few clear explanations of how the different events work (qualifying rounds, rules): they seem to expect us to know it all already. You have to suppose that CTV didn't have that many good sports reporters and had to rope in a lot of beginners, or specialists in other things. The only solid performance is from Brian Williams, the CBC transfuge, and a few professional athletes, led by Catriona Le May Doan.
Interviews of the wonderful young medallists and others by most of CTV's upbeat young reporters are poorly prepared, the questions ridiculously banal and repetitive. "So, how does it feel to have a gold (silver, bronze) medal?", "Did you ever think you'd be standing here today?", "How do you think your family feels about this?". They interviewed some young children one day, about to start a ski lesson: "So, Jeremy, are you excited?" That's called a leading question, and most kids allowed themselves to be led, but when one said "No", the interviewer seemed surprised and unprepared, turned away from the poor, sincere little boy and asked the next one: "And you, are you excited?" as if his friend was something of a loser. Come on! How about a real interaction, some spark of originality or humour?
And don't get me started on the website. It has lots of nice features, though some of them only work part of the time, apparently, and some (like the medals list) disappear one day and return the next. It's impossibly busy, with stuff blinking at you from all over the place. And it only updates some parts on the fly, so when Canada gets a gold you're updated in one section, but the number of medals stays the same and you have to refresh to be sure what happened. They had a nice series of photos of Canadian athletes during the first week, but you couldn't tell why they, rather than others, had been chosen, or what the series represented. (Now it's much better, there's a series of Canadian winners, and another of Canadians competing today. Seems like a no-brainer.) Having so much streaming video available is wonderful, it's true, and means you can see things you missed on TV. There's also the nice set of TV-like boxes you can browse through to see what is on during the day and what channel you can see it on, but they don't seem to distinguish between women's events and men's, so when it says Curling, CAN-SWE, you don't know which sex is involved. Sometimes, I get confused.
Please, CBC, make sure you get the next Olympics.
