Arthur Solomon

During my career in the sports business – first as a reporter, then as an individual who was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs, I’ve sat through much more sporting events than a sane individual should. 

Many of these events were so exciting that they kept me at the edge of my seat, and delayed my going to the men’s room until there was a break in the action. But some were so tedious that I had to refill my coffee cup every few minutes in order to keep awake. The most recent such sporting event that caused me to drink enough caffeine to make the planters in Brazil happy was the recently concluded Winter Olympic in Beijing, China.

Because of Covid restrictions watching skiers glide down mountains covered with artificial snow or doing tricks in the air, watching athletes in space age sleds slide down “tracks” and skiers on ice do their thing ad infinitum did not make for “must watch” viewing.  That’s just not my opinion. TV ratings for these games, according credible news reports as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, captured the smallest amount of prime time viewers ever for a Winter Olympics. The uninterrupted sequence of the same athletic events, except for commercials or Mike Tirico's reading from a script to announce forthcoming events, made for a viewing experience more boring than watching a TV test signal for this viewer.

However, it appears that NBCUniversal execs are taking lessons in denialism from their partners at the International Olympic Committee and Chinese government. In a full page ad that I saw in the February 22 Wall Street Journal, the network thanked Team USA athletes, advertisers, other broadcast partners  and viewers for “binging the Olympics like no other event for 18 days and nights,” which none-biased observers might believe is seeing things through rose colored glasses. The ad brought back memories of my early days in public relations, when I had to write ads for Broadway shows that were slammed by theatrical critics. I would search through the reviews looking for the one favorable comment in an otherwise  negative article, often settling for a line that read, “The costumes were perfection,” neglecting to include the following sentence, which began with, “But,” and then detailed why the price of a ticket could have been better spent.

The previous day, February 21, NBC issued a press release low on verbiage but loaded with statistics, trying to convince journalists about the success of its coverage. But as Mark Twian said about statistics, “There are three kinds of lies: “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” and “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

Defenders of the NBCUniversal’s lack-luster production might claim that the Covid restrictions prevented camera crews from traveling to various parts of China (or to Japan during the Summer games) to film features of the cultural aspects of a host country, which normally makes the Olympics much more viewer friendly than sitting before a TV screen and watching what amounts to a closed loop of similar sporting events.

But certainly NBC knew of the restrictions that the Chinese government would impose on journalists many years prior to the 2022 games.  So as far as I’m concerned the coronavirus and the political situation inside China should not be used as an excuse for why theses games could not have been made more TV viewer friendly.

China has long held a fascination for Americans and with a little creatively these fascinations could have been prepackaged into features for use during the games by using scenes from movies, of which there are many.

Just a few of the famous films that could have been used to produce interesting features with Chinese-Americans cultural experts differentiating fact from fiction were:

• The Good Earth, the 1937 American drama about Chinese farmers struggling to survive that is based on the historical fiction novel by American author Pearl S. Buck published in 1931, which starred Paul Muni and Luise Rainer.
• The Adventures of Marco Polo, a 1938 film about Venetian explorer Marco Polo’s travel to Peking to locate Chinese treasures, starring Gary Cooper, George Barbier, Sigrid Gurie, Ernest Truex and Basil Rathbone.
• Set in a small American mission in China in 1947, at a time of civil war, 1955’s The Left Hand of God  stars Humphrey Bogart as a hunted man masquerading as a Catholic priest and Gene Tierney  as a nurse.
• In a film adaptation of the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical Flower Drum Song, Chinese immigrant Miyoshi Umeki is betrothed to nightclub boss Jack Soo, but he wants to marry showgirl Nancy Kwan, resulting in a comic telling of different customs regarding marriage between young and older Chinese.
• The Sand Pebbles is a 1966 American film about a rebellious U.S. sailor aboard the fictional river gunboat USS San Pablo on Yangtze Patrol in 1920s China, starring Steve McQueen.

And certainly a  discussion regarding why the popular Charley Chan series of four dozen movies, depicting a brilliant Chinese-American detective on the Honolulu police force, became a victim of political correctness and  is no longer seen on television could have been the basis of a discussion about how Chinese were portrayed in American movies and separated the fiction from the actuality.

More recent American movies about the Chinese-American experience that would have made for interesting features and discussion topics were:

• The Farewell, which explores the cultural differences between East and West and the generations divide between a young Chinese-American woman raised in the U.S. and the traditions of her ancestors who want to hide the truth from her grandmother who is dying.
• The Joy Luck Club, which told the story about the difficult relationships between immigrant Chinese mothers in San Francisco and their American-born daughters.

Also movies produced in China, which now has the world’s largest movie industry, could have been used as interesting features to break up the monotony of the sameness commentary and athletic events.

Certainly the success of many Chinese -Americans in the fields of academics and politics, and their experiences growing up as a minority person of color in the U.S., as well as the many Chinese-Americans athletes who participated in the Beijing Olympics could have replaced the traditional cultural stories of host countries that were missing from the Beijing Olympics and reduced the repetitiveness of seeing athlete after athlete participating in the same event, only to be interrupted by endless commercials.

Also, a discussion of the history of the Chinese experience in the U.S. from the late 1700s to today would have made for a fascinating interlude from the sameness of athletic events, as would the aspects of Chinese and American culture that are similar and different.

Film clips and discussions of the above topics certainly could have provided a break from the non-stop televising of similar events, which in my opinion made for the most boring Olympics since they have been televised. And it certainly would have been more interesting television than going into the homes of family and friends cheering on their favorite sons and daughters.

Certainly the brass at NBCUniversal had to know that of all the Olympics the one in Beijing would need special treatments. Instead they force-fed a series of niche sports to the viewing public that made for 17 days of unimaginative and tedious TV coverage that resulted in about 50% lower viewers in the U.S., Canada, England and other countries than did the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeong Chang, South Korea.

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About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and was on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He has been a key player on Olympic marketing programs and also has worked at high-level positions directly for Olympic organizations. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com