Thursday, August 26, 2004
BBC, NBC Olympic vultures deserve boycott
In yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald there was a report that Australia's ATN7 TV network, the exclusive domestic Olympic broadcaster, has 10-20 people on the ground on Athens.
Their performance is not highly regarded at home, on par with the dreadful quality of their recent World Cup rugby broadcasting, but the numbers give you some idea of how many people are needed to effectively present the Olympic games to a respectably sized national audience. Perhaps, say, double the numbers of ATN7, provided the group is laced with quality personnel and adequate technology.
Compare these figures with those of the BBC and NBC, which have an estimated 400 and 2500 people respectively on the ground in Greece.
According to the article the vast majority of these people are doing little more than twiddling their thumbs and spreading themselves out at potential "hot spots" waiting for a terrorist attack.
Must be great for the morale of the Greek citizens and the athletes. Beyond any subjective general impressions one may have of those two TV networks, this story represents a disgraceful attitude if accurate.
In the case of the BBC, just imagine those lecherous publicly funded poo-bahs sitting there actually HOPING for a terrorist attack to justify the willful splurge of taxpayer money.
There are too many BBC "episodes" like this.
It is said that during the European Soccer Cup in Portugal , over 200 BBC executives flew out for every England game on first class return tickets (about £1200 a pop at the time) and stayed for a one night drinking binge, before flying back again.
Which again gives rise to the question: Is a monolithic, biased, BBC necessary in today's world?
