whitebread

Dear NBC,
I know I speak for every person on the planet, including Mr. Phelps, when I say this: Swimming IS BORING. There is precisely one thing that happens in swimming that is of any interest. Someone swims faster than someone else. The problem is compounded if that someone is the same person over and over again. I think we both know this, which is why you push the interesting sports to the end of your coverage each evening. And just so we’re clear, and you don’t have to follow any links from this letter, I’m talking about gymnastics. Gymnastics is interesting, but not in the way you seem to think. The stories of the people competing aren’t important. If we wanted to see real-life dramas, we’d watch the other crap you blast out nonstop in the intervening years. No, gymnastics is interesting because it’s a bunch of people doing some amazing shit with their bodies.

Everyone wants to see gymnastics in the olympics because that’s the only time they’re on tv. This means that nobody knows who these people are, which would be fine, except you’re so damn obsessed with the “human element”. Thus you have to spend decades of air-time setting up background, presumably so that your audience can sit up and say “yes” when someone sticks a landing. This, as opposed to the perpetual awe that would result if you just showed the routines, from every angle you’ve got, in every speed film, repeatedly. You have their routines ahead of time, so you can select the most diverse set of them that’s going to be performed if you’re worried about monotony. I guarantee you if you show someone a highbar routine once, in real-time, the only thing people will understand is whether they fell on the dismount. But show that same routine in real-time, then in slow motion, then real-time again, and it will blow people away.

So the next time you yank Costas out of his age-defying vortex, let him know what the new plan is.

Yours,
Whitebread