Yes I agree, and of course we focus a lot on Britain in tennis, football etc.
However, it does feel like it’s gotten worse. I just feel if they are going to cut back to the studio for 15 minutes I’d prefer to hear analyses of the sport (or maybe educating the viewer on some of the concepts and techniques), interspersed with highlights of the very best performances.
Instead in many cases that whole chunk of time can be just talking about an athlete’s biography.
Well it’s not either-or, it’s a question of balance.
For me personally, I don’t give a shit about flag waving (in or out of the olympics), but I can tolerate a certain amount of it. But not to the point where it’s to the massive detriment of the actual sports coverage.
Sounds like they’re following the American style that we’ve had here for quite a while. It’s slowly gotten worse every time for couple of decades, at least. I guess 2 years is about the threshold for forgetting that sort of thing.
I don’t know if the BBC version has reached this point, but in America, apparently everyone has a tragic story! No matter who you are, they’ll track down something in your life that’s sad and produce a hyper-melodramatic 3-minute package about it to air in prime time before they show you compete.
Seeing straight-arrow, stiff, monotone Joe Friday interact with the circa1969 hippies was absolutely hilarious! Wasted, 4’11" hippie girl in one episode walks into a flophouse, sees Friday and Gannon and yells…“Who called the fuzz?” That was funny!
I used to, back when you could actually watch a lot of it, and not just the money-making highlights. I can’t remember the last time I saw a significant part of the decathlon on TV.