For these Olympics, NBC is getting close but not quite so personal in the canned profiles and features that appear each night during the Games.
Where once the heavily produced “up-close-and-personal” segments emphasized athletes’ hardships and struggles — impoverished upbringings, triumph over injuries, midnight political defections — NBC’s overall approach this time around is lighter, tighter and slighter.
On Monday night, for example, Russian pole vaulter Irina Isinbayeva got the spotlight with a breezy, minute-long featurette on her taste in fashion and her posh lifestyle in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
American gymnast Nastia Liukin and her coach-father, Valeri, later appeared briefly discussing their Olympic “journey.”
Other segments have focused on swimmer Natalie Coughlin’s gourmet cooking and a romantic triangle involving rival swimmers from France and Italy. None lasted longer than about 90 seconds.
The featurettes were introduced in the 1970s by legendary ABC sports producer Roone Arledge and have since been a critical part of Olympics TV coverage. Because most Olympic sports seldom appear on prime-time TV, the videos provide a little background — and build rooting interest — in people most viewers have never heard of.
The strategy is simple: Make even casual viewers care about discus throwers, kayakers, volleyball players and the like.
NBC began changing its approach during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City after audience research indicated that viewers wanted the profiles in “an unobtrusive, bite-size fashion,” David Neal, NBC’s executive vice president of Olympics coverage, said via e-mail from Beijing.
Thereafter, the number, tone and length of the profiles began to change. NBC says it is broadcasting fewer of them than in past Olympics, although it declined to provide specific figures.
Most have been cut down to about 30 seconds, instead of three minutes or more during earlier Games. NBC says about half the subjects are non-Americans.
The typical profile includes several shots of the athlete in competition, a few glimpses of him training in his home town and a brief sound bite or two. Then it’s back to the action.
The features “must advance our storytelling without interrupting the pace of the broadcast,” Neal said. “Our prime-time show is competition-driven. Any time we take our viewers away from the arena, it must be for a very compelling reason.”
Part of NBC’s strategy is to shift what Neal calls “the storytelling” — the tear-jerking biographical stories that became a staple of the “up-close” featurettes — into the announcers’ commentary as an event unfolds.
That has produced plenty of sentimental and treacly observations from the people describing the action. Slate.com, the online magazine owned by The Washington Post Co., has meticulously detailed this via its “Sap-o-Meter,” a running tally of the 33 most syrupy words: “sacrifice,” “dream,” “courage.”
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