A Very TODAY Show Valentine

If you're an American at the Olympics, you might as well be leaving your patriotism at passport control if you don't make it at least once to the NBC TODAY Show set in Olympic Park.

Been there, done that in Atlanta, Athens, Torino (they brought Al Roker to my P.R. client's B.C. Canada Place log cabin pavilion), Beijing (we took client, the Premiere of British Columbia, to sit with Matt Lauer), London and Sochi.

Wednesday night (Tuesday morning stateside) brought the first opportunity to check this five-ringed ritual off the list, and it turned out to be an exciting night to be there!

I stuck around for the first hour of the show with about 200 fellow Team USA fans and a few curious South Koreans.

Behind the scenes, members of the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team awaited their national TV spotlight and conversation with Al Roker to preview their competitions.

Cute to see Olympic silver medalist Devin Logan meet briefly with her boyfriend. Gotta hand it to her for gently stroking his beard with her Trump-size pretend mitts!

Roker's main updates were about the strong winds that temporarily shut down much of Olympic Park.

Other news du jour concerned four-time Olympian, three-time medalist and No. 100 U.S. Winter Olympic medalist Shaun White's triumphant return to the gold medal podium.

White, who earlier in the day got flustered when reporters asked about past #MeToo-relevant choices, took time to apologize in his TODAY interview that focused mostly on his big day in competition.

White addressed questions from co-hosts Koda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie.

"I've grown as a person over the years and it's amazing how life works, and twists and turns and lessons learned," said White. "Every experience in my life I feel like it's taught me a lesson and I definitely feel like I'm a much more changed person than I was when I was younger."

Way to stay on P.R. message.

I was delighted when Kotb later worked the crowd and responded to my offer of an Olympic blog pin, which she complimented while posing for selfies.

We had previously talked hours before the 2016 Olympic opening ceremony (in front of the Rio Marriott) and, as always, she was all smiles and so friendly to each of the fans on site.

Not sure when there might be another late night at Olympic Park (the live broadcasts to the States start at 9 p.m. in Korea), but it will be fun to discover TODAY sets in Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022 and beyond.

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver

Happy Accidents and NBC Awash at Copacabana

Saturday in the Olympic city presented several happy accidents.

The day started with a stroll to USA House, the USOC's remote office and hospitality suite for the Games, to meet with a public relations colleague.

The house -- in a Rio school that Team USA is renovating -- remains an active construction site with painting, banner installation and other hard hat activities underway.

I did not yet go inside, but it will be exciting to see how the location is transformed from now to volunteer training on Aug. 2.

Bidding adieu to my colleague, I headed across the street to the east end of Ipanema Beach, eventually walking to the rocky peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic. One of the remote Rio Media Center locations -- perhaps the most scenic of them all -- has a balcony and TV studios overlooking the most spectacular beach on earth.

Donning a media credential I was afforded a few minutes to soak in the media center views before climbing what the house manager described as "Rio's ant hill" where thousands of locals and tourists gather to applaud the sunset on clear evenings.

Something tells me these moments and views will remain all-time personal favorites from the 2016 Olympic experience as a wave of calm and peace of mind washed over me -- I will stress about Rio's five-ringed challenges no more!

Heading past Fort Copacabana and through the peninsula neighborhood, several billboards for what may be the Russia House came into view.

I could not help but wonder which athletes on the boards need to be painted over due to the Russia Olympic doping scandal -- the Russia House is typically a very popular venue -- wondering how it may be different in 2016.

Moving on to Copacabana Beach, a large, blue box on the beach proved to be a television viewing stand with a bridge across Ave. Atlantica to connect it to a Rio 2016 Media Center.

It was no accident the Games' most prominent broadcaster, NBC, occupied most if not all of the temporary compound.

As I came around the side of the blue box, it was surprising to spot a bulldozer, yellow or red caution tape and a few additional security folks keeping an eye on a small crowd gathered to look at the building.

Jutting out of the ground/beach level of the structure there was an elaborate and colorful TV studio -- I thought perhaps this was one of the TODAY Show sets.

Flashing my Rio Media Center badge, I was permitted closer inspection alongside reporters from O Globo, APF and a few photographers. Stern faces on the NBC production team told the tale -- the entire set had moments earlier been drenched by a huge winter wave crashing onto Copacabana Beach.

Oops!

About this time the AFP reporter introduced himself asking my news outlet, and I explained the Olympic blogger status.

"Well, here is your story today!" he said.

A story, indeed.

I spoke with a couple of the NBC personnel who confirmed one oversized wave came up over their custom-installed mini-sea wall facing the ocean side of their temporary set. The swell was intense enough to lift and leave behind about an inch of sand on the decorative tile flooring that some team members were starting to sweep or clean with shovels and mops. The wave's watermark extended almost all the way to the main road.

Other producers -- perhaps more senior NBC personnel -- exchanged hushed conversations while gazing upon the scene. About this time the O Globo reporter named Gabriella chatted up the cause of the surprise mayhem.

"It is the ressaca -- the winter tides like the one that crashed the new bike path a few weeks ago," she said.

As reported earlier this year, a new beachfront cycling structure was destroyed by a large wave, killing two riders. Apparently these winter tides bring a handful of larger waves which are impossible to predict.

Thank goodness folks were only soaked by Saturday's wave!

Most of the NBC folks started clamming up when they realized AFP, O Globo and bloggers were on the scene, but we did also confirm the furnished outdoor set is intended as the man NBC News, NBC Sports and Late Night programming with Carson Daly.

Seems like the perfect time to fly in Ryan Seacrest.

Get it? Seacrest.

With no more set-drenching waves upon us during my hour around the set, I moved on to visit the Olympic Mega-Store across the street from the Copacabana Marriott (my 2005 Rio holiday accommodations).

While staying at the hotel years ago, my then-girlfriend, her sister and I made friends with one of the masseuses employed by Marriott, but I learned he had long-since moved on from tourist muscle treatments.

In the Mega-Store, a few key items and details were revealed:

There are few items available for XXL (locally, size GG) male Olympic fan.

The organizing committee was noticeably conservative with regards to Olympic pin designs (far fewer than in Athens, Beijing or London).

Inflatable fan gear apparently is popular -- people were snapping up oversized "mascot hands" for clapping and blow-up Rio Olympic torches (could these become this Olympiad's "red mittens" must-have souvenir?).

Much of the beach gear and shirts is very colorful and festive. Just wish they had more of it in my size.

I bumped into some of the students from Ball State University (first met at Rio Media Center on Friday) as they enjoyed the scene.

The next happy accident was spotting Samsung's pavilion adjacent to the Olympic store. It is sort of nondescript, mostly glass and marked with only subtle logos for the Worldwide Olympic partner brand. 

With the help of a translator, I interviewed the Samsung manager on site, and she shared a few details on which collectors may pin their hopes:

• There are 30 Samsung pins, all in the shape of the latest Galaxy mobile device

• Most of the designs (20 of them) feature a sports pictogram from archery to weightlifting

• The other eight designs feature icons of Rio from Havianas and beach umbrellas to Sugarloaf Mountain and the Christ The Redeemer statue

• A black felt presentation board is free for mounting the pins

• As visitors redeem their passport stamps (two stamps = one pin) they draw the pins out of a mystery box to provide a random element to the promotion

• If you pull out of the box a design you already have, you are encouraged to exchange it with fellow collectors ("no returns" to the box for a another draw).

• Eight of the designs are only available at the Barra location for Samsung, with another eight exclusive to Copacabana, but the manager and translator smiled and said they would not reveal which eight are specific to the two pavilions.

I managed to earn or trade for 11 of the designs, and all were for sports, leading me to believe the eight local icon designs are either Barra-specific or they will be blended into the giveaways during the Games (akin to the U.K. icons suddenly appearing later in the London 2012 Samsung pin program).

Let the Samsung pin games commence!

My final three serendipitous moments of Saturday: Arriving at Co-Sport to collect my tickets two days before their ticketing center opens (oh, well); crossing paths with a U.S.O.C. friend while ordering pizza near the hotel (fun albeit brief visit); and stumbling in to a late-night dinner at the Veloso bar-cafe, now the Garota de Ipanema Cafe, the actual location where the world's second-most recorded pop song was written as inspired by a passerby teenage Girl from Ipanema. 

It was only after two caipirinhas that I noticed the writing on the wall (large, framed images of the hand-written music). 

Great fun to learn the back-story for the song while enjoying a wonderful meal.

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver

One Year Until Rio ... BINGO!

August 5, 2015, marks the "one year to go" milestone for the Rio 2016 Olympic opening ceremony.

In step with -- or maybe a pace ahead of -- the standard Olympic reporting playbook, a news outlet or two already dropped their Rio preview stories as early as mid-July.

Many more will follow during the next week. In fact, as I typed this blog entry, the Associated Press distributed their one-year-out summary already picked up stateside and in Singapore.

Predictably, these one-year milestone reports skew negative. Olympic news understandably isn't "news" without a cynical tone or a steady drumbeat of "CON-TRO-VER-SY ... CON-TRO-VER-SY" and click-bait headlines stirring the pot. 

Too often the remarkable stories of athletic feats and organizational successes are brushed aside for the easier angle of perceived problems on the horizon. I concede, many pre-Games issues are real. But most of the challenges of hosting a global sports festival do not rise to the life or death threshold some news outlets would have their viewers or readers believe.

In anticipation of this year's crop of anti-Olympic rhetoric and various outlets/reporters parroting each other, some friends and I came up with a new twist on a traditional, popular game. 

We present for your reading and social media sharing pleasure ... Olympic Buzz Word Bingo.

Buzzword Bingo (a.k.a. bullsh*t bingo) shares an interesting heritage rooted in traditional bingo cards. My own introduction to the buzzword bingo concept arrived via Dilbert by Scott Adams (see sample below). 

It remains a mystery as to which, and whether, former managers knew who played this game in the halls and conference rooms of the P.R. agencies where I worked over the years. 

Reading last week's Olympic countdown story distributed by Agence France-Presse inspired our five-ringed version, and you're invited to play along and please share the bingo card at the base of this post.

Go ahead and try it out! The aforementioned AP story almost creates a blackout Olympic bingo card! 

This game is also intended to help throw stones at what I perceive to be NBC's regular Olympic roll-out of scare tactics designed to encourage viewers to keep their butts on the couch instead of on planes to the Olympic host city. 

Far too many people fell for the anti-Athens and anti-Beijing Olympic Fear Factor messaging, and they missed quite a party in both cities. 

The Olympic terror threat level reached high enough crescendos in 2008 that even The Onion spoofed Tom Brokaw, Bob Costas and John Tesh pre-Games scare tactics (or in the case of Tesh, his over-the-top gymnastics commentary).

I, for one, hope fewer people will believe the anti-Rio hype and book passage to experience and enjoy Brazil. Rio 2016 in 365 days ... it's going to be a great event!

Cartoon via Dilbert.com. Thanks also to this site for 'Blu' bird image and this site for 'press' hat image used in illustration created by N. Wolaver.

Please download and share this bingo card with your favorite Olympic reporter. Fun for all!

Sure Thing Prediction: NBC Guts Sochi Opening Ceremony

Before posting another update about the Olympic city experience, a word about NBC and a prediction for their Sochi coverage.

For the record, there are many aspects of NBC's Olympic coverage that I find O.K. Some of their feature reports and five-ringed vignettes are fun, and it is enjoyable to return from the Games experience to view their take on the action in an edited format. When there's time, it is fun to view select content at NBCOlympics.com.

With that said, I still cannot stomach archived John Tesh commentary from the times when they permitted him to dramatize figure skating or gymnastics. And there are other Olympic broadcasting ideas about which a strong opinion remains.

The part I definitely don't like, don't understand and will not likely ever concur with is the NBC Olympic producers' decision to alter the Olympic Opening Ceremony for U.S. broadcast, a terrible decision.

Here's NBC's recipe for "Olympic Opening Ceremony American Style" (their Salt Lake 2002 coverage is the only exception to this format) ...

1. Tape the full Olympic Opening Ceremony to "look live" with anchors/commentary
2. Lock producers/editors into editing bays at the NBC quadrant of the International Broadcast Center
3. Slice, dice, carve, mangle and blend on "grind" mode until just before 8 p.m. ET stateside air time
4. Serve up dramatically altered "American ready" version for the masses.

Readers of this blog may recall the London 2012 Opening Ceremony and revelations that entire segments of the event did not air in the USA. Boo! Hiss!

Why can't NBC quote from the Sochi organizing committee Opening Ceremony press kits (a minute-by-minute explanation of every scene in the ceremony meticulously prepared for broadcast reports to reference during the live event)? Why not put this factual document in the hands of Bob Costas and other hosts (Meredith Viera in London)? Would this help, perhaps, for stupid Americans to "get it" when something about the host nation is unveiled?

After catching up on just two days worth of TODAY Show segments from Sochi, with gleeful hosts poking fun at every opportunity and yuk-ing it up with xenophobic remarks about the host nation, I shutter to think how the executive producers already have their cut and gut sites set on Sochi's Opening Ceremony.

Will NBC cut to taped segments about record-setting security costs while American viewers miss out on a Russian history lesson presented on the field of play deemed "too Russian for USA viewers" [to understand]? Da!

Will NBC Olympic producers let the anchors bite their tongues during President Putin's appearance to officially open the Games? Nyet!

Will NBC harp on Torch Relay snafus in lieu of successes of one of the biggest flame caravans in Olympic history? Da!

Will the NBC Olympic broadcast cut to commercial with precision as the last few torchbearers are revealed and immediately after the cauldron ignites? Bероятно (probably).

The only thing that chaps my hide more than the editing is that the powers that be at NBC don't care that many people just want to see the real Opening Ceremony. At the IOC Conference on Women and Sport in February 2012, I posed questions about this topic to the media panel including one of NBC's top producers (the woman who later oversaw the London 2012 broadcast among the most, if not the most, senior producers for NBC Olympics). She sort of shrugged off my questions as if to say, "Meh! Will just do it our way" for ratings, for fun, or just because they can. "These are timing decisions," she said. How about these are business decisions?

What is your opinion on the NBC Olympic broadcast of the Opening Ceremony? Should they just air it intact, heavily edited or somewhere in the middle? Please look to the right column of this blog and cast your vote in the brief poll.

And enjoy watching the Olympics on NBC.

Soiree Olympique

My first few Olympic viewing experiences -- for Montreal 1976, Lake Placed 1980, Sarajevo and Los Angeles 1984 -- felt like a party.

As a toddler, seven year old, and fifth grader, respectively, watching the Games on ABC Sports meant extra TV time and the rare "up past eight" opportunity.

During and after the LA84 opening ceremony, when every kid in the neighborhood went home to watch with family, I naively assumed that everyone in the world dropped everything to view the Olympics.

It wasn't until 1996, when my sister and I viewed the start of the Centennial Games ceremony on a small screen in a suburban Atlanta Chinese restaurant (we were both staying at apartments sans TV access), that it sunk in not everyone cared to watch.

Now I get it -- I may be in the minority on tuning in (LOL).

But some friends DO religiously watch the Opening Ceremonies and competitions. And today via Facebook I spotted an Olympic viewing party invitation from some five-ring fan acquaintances in Janesville, Wisconsin. Bravo! An Olympic Party, Sochi-style!

Perhaps everyone should drink a shot when NBC Olympic commentators utter dramarama terms such as "Olympic security" or "protest zone" and "figure skating controversy."

I'd like to know -- who out there in Blog Reader Land is going to attend or host a Sochi Olympic party? What are you including in your Soiree Olympique to make it authentic? Special Russian recipes and décor, or planning a fondue service with a mini-Olympic cauldron?

After the 1996 work experience, at an auction I purchased an Olympic cooler and official Coca-Cola picnic table and umbrella in anticipation of hosting a Games gathering. Later these items turned into great Ebay sales to fund travel to Sydney 2000, so I never did host an Olympic party. Please share your memories of torch-inclusive gatherings.

Meanwhile, one time I did attend a Golden Globes viewing party (and also attended several client GRAMMY viewing parties in Atlanta). Turns out in tandem with this weekend's Golden Globe Awards broadcast on NBC there will be a "Gold Meets Golden" party featuring many notable summer and winter Olympians and stars of the silver and small screen. According to a press release sent to this blogger, numerous luminaries may attend.

The second-annual NBC/Universal Golden Globes party includes Hollywood hosts Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Ryan Kavanaugh, Bradley Cooper, Mark Wahlberg, Sofia Vergara, Adrien Brody, Chelsea Handler, Kerry Washington, Owen Wilson and Hayden Panettiere, who is engaged to Atlanta Olympic gold medalist Wladimir Klitschko.

Atlanta Olympic Village visitor Arnold Schwarzenegger will host a table for winter and summer athletes to attend the Globe Awards ceremony.

The celebrities will join scheduled-to -ttend Olympians including gymnasts Mary Lou Retton, Nadia Comaneci, Bart Conner, Gabby Douglas, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Jake Dalton; figure skater Sasha Cohen; speed skaters Apolo Anton Ohno, Bonnie Blair and Dan Jansen;  athletics greats Bruce Jenner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Alyson Felix, Carmelita Jeter, Will Claye and DeeDee Trotter; diver Greg Louganis; swimmers  Nathan Adrian, Rebecca Soni, Eric Shanteau, John Naber, Jessica Hardy and Summer Sanders; water polo player Tony Azevedo; freeskier Nick Goepper; fencer Tim Morehouse; beach volleyball players Kerri Walsh Jennings, Misty May Treanor, April Ross and Jen Kessy; original Dream Team basketball player Magic Johnson, and ice hockey player Caitlin Cahow (recently announced as members of President Barack Obama’s Presidential Delegation for the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games) will also participate.

An Olympic auction is set to launch at the event, with items available for online bidding including VIP tickets to exclusive parties to celebrate the Sochi Games with Olympic legends at Team USA Clubs in Los Angeles (Feb. 7) and Vail, Colo. (Feb. 15), official Team USA apparel, and a Cola-Cola snowboard to be signed by Gold Meets Golden party attendees. The auction launches Jan. 12 and continues this month via CharityBuzz.com/USOC.

I will probably do a party dance when my visa application for Russia Federation is finally processed -- getting anxious for "official" access to Sochi to arrive by mail. Why must this take so many days?

Images via Rich Fletcher and CW3PR

NBC Cuts London Opening Ceremony's Iconic Dance Segment by Akram Khan

The plan today includes blogging about last night's London Olympic Opening Ceremony and my experience there. This remains part of the plan, but a detour just occurred at press conference attended at the London Media Centre.

The press conference included a surprising revelation that apparently went missed at a similar press event in the LOCOG (London organizing committee) Main Press Center and International Broadcast Center earlier today. The details is picking up steam online, and here's my contribution to the discussion.

Last night, fans in the stadium and television viewers in the U.K., China and most other corners of the globe enjoyed a moving dance performance serenaded by Emeli Sandé singing "Abide With Me," a popular hymn in the U.K. Like Pavarotti's performance in the Torino opening ceremony, or the drummer session of the Beijing opening, this dance segment was an iconic portion not to be missed.

Folks in the USA apparently missed it, however, as NBC cut this portion from their time-delayed broadcast. For shame!

The LMC session featured Akram Khan, the internationally acclaimed dance choreographer, flanked by Farooq Chaudhry -- a director in Khan's company -- and Alan Yentob of the BBC. Khan was hand-picked by Danny Boyle to create the aforementioned original dance segment to the London Olympic Opening Ceremony, and Khan delivered what I believe is the longest and best dance element to any Olympic opening event. It was beautiful, made all the better with Sandé's soothing voice.

Most of the questions at the LMC press event were standard, and Khan -- who turns 38 on Sunday -- shared some fun facts from behind-the-scenes. For instance, he explained a Goldilocks-like selection process for the segment's 11 year old boy (the first to audition was too chubby, the second was too athletic, but they eventually found a kid who was just right). When pressed by Chinese media asking for comparisons to the 2008 opening ceremony, Khan took the high road offering that each opening ceremony brought out the best of the host nation in its own way.

Khan also talked about the decision to use dust as a key prop (an element instilling a sense of memory) and when asked by this blogger about what Olympic moments may have inspired last night's segment, Khan said he suffered a leg injury and his physical therapist encouraged him to watch Olympians to see how their training might aid in Khan's recovery (Khan noted Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt among those he watched).

Then a surprising question popped up from an American reporter in the room (wishing I caught his name so I could credit him here). The reporter asked Khan for his reaction to the news that NBC did not air the dance segment in the USA.

Khan was silent, then he explained to the room and the reporter that this was the first he heard this news. You could see Khan was upset, stunned, shaken and disappointed all in an instant. But again he took the high road and did not express detailed feelings at first, taking in the news.

At this moment, Khan's colleague Chaudhry said he had just learned the news moments before the press conference and that it was disappointing since their dance company has such a following in the USA.

After fielding other questions, I asked Khan to provide his reaction now that he had 15 minutes to process it. His full response is on the video with this post, and via this link. Briefly, his initial response was, "I feel disheartened and disappointed." Chaudhry added his own take on the disappointment in the video.

After the press event, I asked Chaudhry to comment further and he said, "It's disgraceful U.S. media could make that decision and [I] would like to know why."

It is worth noting that, as shown in the video, neither Khan nor Chaudhry expressed anger during and after the press event. It was more of a downer for which they simply wish to know "Why?"

I asked some Italian journalists in the London Media Center, "What reaction would Italians have if NBC cut Pavarotti from the Torino Opening Ceremony?" and they answered, "That would be bad. A scandal!" I asked the same of a China media journalist who responded, "I think people [in China] would want to know why they did that."

I concur. I would like to know why NBC made this decision (I have a few hunches if anyone asks nicely).

Though it is unlikely a response from NBC will be possible any time soon, I will inquire with NBC about this question and post any response. During the IOC Conference on Women and Sport earlier this year, a very senior NBC producer answered my questions about Olympic broadcast decisions made by the network, and I suspect she has the answer if I can reach her about the Khan question as to why the dance segment was cut.

In the meantime, I am interested in others' reactions to the apparent decision by NBC to cut the dance segment from the London Olympic Opening Ceremony from their broadcast. It is my understanding (though unverified as of this initial post) that NBC also cut a segment commemorating the July 7 tragedy in London (which occurred the morning after London won the 2012 Olympic bid). More on that later.

UPDATE AT 9:40 PM LONDON: There is a post on Deadspin.com with a link to the BBC footage of the Khan segment. As an audience member in the stadium, I can tell you that the ceremony included a July 7 Tribute video on which July 7 victim photos were shown while a Brian Eno track "An Ending (Ascent)" played -- an appropriate selection. This was separate from (though happened to be the transition to) the Khan dance segment. The Khan segment was not related directly to July 7 (the 2005 day on which several Londoners died on the morning after London won the 2012 Olympic bid). Rather, Khan's segment was more about memory, mortality and dreams for which he leaves interpretation to the audience.

Also of note: Khan's dance company will tour the U.S. with stops in New York, Los Angeles, Irvine, Calif., and Santa Barbara, Calif., during October. Visit www.akramkhancompany.net/html/akram_calendar.php for more details.

Photos from LMC by Nicholas Wolaver. Photo of Khan pointing/performing by Richard Haughton via Akram Khan Company. Photos from Opening Ceremony by Associated Press photographers Ivan Sekretarev/AP and Jae C. Hong/AP via DenverPost.com

So Long, Dick E.

Last week Dick Ebersol resigned from NBC Sports, where he championed the network's signature style for presenting the Olympics. Though this is a big change for NBC, the IOC and the Olympic Movement, this is, to me, a change for the better.

The change also provides a real opportunity for the next Olympic broadcast producer to right things that NBC skewed a bit in the last 20 or so years of five-ringed telecasts.

I'm not a fan of NBC's "storytelling" method for showcasing the "Olympic drama" -- though it was an interesting approach that I first noticed during a Barcelona 1992 Olympic segment regarding the surviving family members of the 1972 Munich Olympic terrorist attack, to me the NBC/Ebersol presentations of the Games jumped the shark with the over-the-top broadcast of Kerri Strug and her stuck landing in Atlanta Olympic gymnastics competition.

Why does the NBC style bother me?

During the Atlanta Olympics, some Olympic Village colleagues and I learned about the IOC's live feeds that provide commercial and commentary-free channels of all warm-ups and competitions in progress. It is possible, in the Olympic Village and other Olympic venues, to view the "gymnastics channel" or "tennis channel" or any other Olympic sport channel courtesy of multiple camera positions inside each venue, broadcast via the International Broadcast Center (IBC).

While most of America was watching/listening/enduring John Tesh nearly soiling himself over Kerri Strug's Olympic feat, I was watching the same drama unfold with commentary-free comfort of the Olympic Village. The drama was just the same -- perhaps more so -- as we also got to see athletes compete who were ignored by NBC.

Once you've viewed the Olympics in this commentary/commercial-free format, there is no topping it (unless, of course, you have a ticket to an Olympic event and view it live and in person).

To me, NBC continuously misses the boat by adding over-the-top commentary and "storytelling" to the mix. The Olympic "drama" of the world's best athletes is all the drama one needs -- viewers don't need Tesh droning on and on with faux-expertise.

To his credit, I do usually enjoy Bob Costas' informed perspective on competition, and select sports commentators also bring some interesting flavor to the mix. Also, to Ebersol's credit, he did take the Olympic viewer experience to a new plane, and the Olympic Order bestowed upon him is deserved. The Olympic Movement is better for all of Ebersol's creativity, leadership and contributions.

I just wish NBC would cut back on the storytelling and showcase a broader international mix of the real drama of global competition. People will watch it with as much, if not more, interest, in my opinion.

No matter which network picks up the U.S. Olympic broadcasting rights for Sochi 2014 and Rio de Janiero 2016 in a few weeks, when the IOC determines the Games broadcaster of the two post-London 2012 Olympiads, I hope they will seize this post-Ebersol opportunity to assess the IOC commentary-free format and consider a sport-by-channel offering that will let the viewer determine for themselves the "drama" unfolding on screen.

Could be a real treat for viewers to enjoy IOC-pure format (with all the new technology at everyone's fingertips, why not empower viewers with on-screen options to learn more about ALL of the athletes in the competition rather than only the Americans?).

Chicago Tribune Olympic reporter Philip Hersh also poses some interesting questions about Ebersol worth a read at the Globetrotting blog.

It will be interesting to see where Ebersol turns up next in Olympic circles.

Photo via AFP/Getty Images/Stephen Lovekin at this link