BYE-BYE BEIJING, HOLA DONA BARBARA

I heard Vin Scully ask this question on a Dodger telecast last season: "When did everything get to be forty years ago?" He asked it after making a comment about a Dodger player from the 1960's. I asked it of myself when I realized I've been cognizant of the Olympic movement since I was 9-years old.

Just turned 49, I've spent a great deal of time watching still another round of games. For all that was written in the press, bandied about on the web, and chewed over on TV, the Beijing games turned out to be quite good, and extraordinarily watchable--save one thing: NBC's insistence on delaying their live broadcasts for the Pacific and Mountain time zones. Why? When live telecasts across the country would have permitted many of the swimming and gymnastics events to be presented in Prime Time on the west coast? Bread, bones, jing, moohlah...the ever-lovin' NBC/Universal, owned-and operated-stations and affiliate bottom line: Money. A live telecast from coast-to-coast-would have started at 5pm PDT, pre-empting local newscasts, the most lucrative of any programs aired by a local station, like KNBC, Los Angeles. They make millions in advertising revenue from the 5pm news. Better to delay the telecast three hours than lose those bucks. Besides, NBC promised sponsors Prime Time--and sponsors are to get exactly what they pay for, especially these days.

It's odd. Here on the west coast, viewers will accept a delayed broadcast of everything except the Super Bowl, World Series, college sports and the Academy Awards. 30 years ago, the NBA finals were not shown in prime time, but delayed til 11:30 EST and PST. No way they'd do that today. But the Grammys, Emmy Awards and the Olympics? New Yorkers would march on Rockefeller Plaza with torches if NBC tried it there. Southern Californians, mostly, don't care...so long as you don't tell them who won in advance.

I prefer the rush of the live telecast. I feel cheated, otherwise. My original Olympic viewing experience in 1968 was mostly live from Mexico City on ABC, in the afternoon when I got home from school. The network was charting virgin territory. It was the first time since the dawn of television broadcasting that the games were held in a time zone that permitted a live telecast. Some 40 hours of the games in Mexico City were beamed via satellite, in color. Much of the nation got to watch Olympic track and field events, gymnastics, swimming, diving and basketball as they happened. That had been done on a limited basis by NBC with some of the events in 1964, but nothing on the scale of the games of the XIX Olympiad.

I vividly recall watching Bernard Wrightson winning the gold medal on the 3-meter diving board. Soaking in the boxing matches called by Howard Cosell, and the stirring, closing ceremonies, in a dark stadium with its cauldron extinguished. In our house, we didn't see it in color, but it made quite an impression.

I admit that by the time I turned 13, ABC was preparing to telecast the Munich games, and I intended to watch as many of the planned 55 hours of coverage that I could. That's when the evil tape-delay first came into play. What was comfortably telecast during late afternoon in 1968, would be delayed three hours to be shown in prime time in 1972, or late afternoon weekend hours. It meant that when announcer Jim McKay was breathlessly describing the end of the
5, ooo meter run, and telling us, "...this is coming to you live! No one in the world knows how this will turn out!" we already knew Steve Prefontaine was going to fall just short of winning the bronze medal.

Though there were unforgettable moments, like Mark Spitz swimming to 7 golds (a record just eclipsed in Beijing by Michael Phelps), and Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut, those games remain marred by the memory of those Israeli athletes taken hostage and subsequently killed. On an early post, I acknowledged that, at his passing, Jim McKay was being remembered for the way he brought the news of that tragedy to the nation. What only I seem to remember, though, is hearing the news on an NBC special report that cut into the Nightly News with John Chancellor...because it was 6:45 PDT. McKay's soul-crushing announcement, "They're all gone," was not seen on the West Coast of the country for another three hours, because his reporting was a part of the Olympic package, to be telecast ONLY in prime time. ABC knew no shame.

It wasn't until 1984, with the games in our backyard, here in Southern California, that the Pacific time zone was treated to viewing Olympic sports live. The L.A. games were a tour de force. i was working at KLON, in Long Beach, the public radio station that supplanted our 10-watt college station at Long Beach State. This didn't keep the major sports franchises and the LAOOC (Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee) from assuming it, too, was a college station. I was de facto sports director of KLON. All that meant was I did the sports reports. And regardless of whom I had write the letters for me, I was denied credentials to the games. I reported the results from a portable color TV I brought from home, relishing the live telecasts, but chagrined no one had the juice to get me passes to cover the games in my own back yard (literally. I lived in Carson, a mile away from the Olympic Velodrome, and could look out the kitchen window to see cyclists, in the uniforms of their native lands, zooming through the neighborhood to stretch out their legs for the races to come. It was bizarre!).

Those games also stand out as the last great reporting done by Howard Cosell on ABC. Love him or hate him, he was brilliant calling the boxing matches from the L.A. Sports Arena, as spot on and accurate as he was at Mexico City in '68, Der Box Halle in Munich, '72, or when the U.S. Boxing team, lead by Sugar Ray Leonard, pummeled their opponents for a stunning five gold medals at Montreal in 1976. In Beijing, NBC farmed boxing out to CNBC, and all the Americans were eliminated early.

About CNBC...MSNBC, USA, and the other cable networks of NBC/Universal. Most of the events shown on those channels were LIVE. All night soccer, softball, field hockey, water polo, tennis, rowing, kayaking, canoeing, and a heaping helping of Table Tennis and Badminton. That got ridiculous, though. To most Americas, tab;e tennis and badminton are back yard barbecue games, which aren't played without a cooler full of beer or a plate of potato salad nearby. It was difficult to take the sports seriously. But they were, at least, LIVE Olympic action...and NBC saved dough by having the announcers for most of those events call the play from an HD screen in New York. To their credit, they never claimed otherwise.

?Tu eres Dona Barbara, verdad?

Because I'm the kind of guy who'd flip over to ESPN and read the sports updates on the crawl at the bottom of the screen, I knew whether to watch NBC's prime time Olympic coverage of an American victory, or stick with the Dodger game. But something new came into the picture a few days before the games began.

I love Spanish language TV. I speak so little Spanish, I can only pick out the words I know, but the announcers are so theatrical...they way they once were in English, before some focus group research resulted in a ton of guys with the vocal patterns of Ryan Seacrest (but not his money!). And then there's the Saturday morning auto-dealer infomercial with the scantily clad girls, cleavage plunging, skirts rising, ranting a mile-a-minute in Spanish about some second hand hunk of junk you actually wind up wanting to buy-- if she came along with it. It's a kick, as long as you can take the stereo-ping-ponging- telephone rings that accompany the hot salsa, cumbia and meringue music that girls are chattering to.

A few days before the Olympics started, I was flipping around between innings of a Dodger-Phillies game, when I ran across KVEA, the Telemundo station in L.A. A telenovela was in progress. For those who don't know, the telenovela is the heart of prime-time programming for Spanish speaking countries around the world. A soap-opera like show will run five nights a week until it concludes its run after 6 or 7 months. The hallmark of the telenovela is melodrama, gorgeous women, and lingering, smoldering looks on the actors faces just before cutting to another scene.

I had no idea what I was watching, but it appeared a bunch of drunken men were splashing through a river in pursuit of a frightened young woman. A hideous assault ensued, done without the explicitness you see in films, but with a brutality that allowed the viewer (even this one who doesn't speak Spanish) to realize what was going on. I flipped back to the ball game, but found myself headed back to Telemundo to try and figure out what happened to the young woman.

I had stumbled upon a story called "Dona Barbara," famous in Spanish literature. Written in 1929 by a Venezuelan who would eventually serve a short term as the country's president. Dona Barbara is a beautiful young woman raised by a river in Venezuela. Bandits kill her fiance then assault her, leaving life long scars that would make her the hard hearted femme fa tale. The story is rife with symbolism, it's characters who represent progressive and repressive politics. Barbara represents repression, cold and cunning, who falls for a neighboring ranch owner, Santos Luzardo, who embodies the tale's idealism and progressive themes. Barbara as a 17 year old daughter named Marisela, by the man she swindled her ranch from. Lorenzo is now a drunkard, living in the wild with Marisela, abandoned and sent away by Barbara as she consolidated power.
How do I know this? Well, I looked the story up on the internet, but found the English closed captioning, CC3. Some of the translations are a riot. In one scene, Dona Barbara rides up to her property and snaps an order to her ranch hand. In Spanish, kit sounds terse, dramatic. The English translation read, "Idiot, grab my horse."

An actress named Edith Gonzales plays Dona Barbara, and she is...easy on the eyes, shall we say, as is Genesis Rodriguez, who plays Marisela. You're reading this and think Dave needs to find more to do, and you're right. Dona Barbara, however, is a brave new viewing world, for me...it's histrionics and place in the world of literature that I was unfamiliar with. And did I mention the women were spectacular? I find it fun, not too bloody, over the top, and escapist is every sense of the word.

What a summer. The Dodgers show spark, trade for Manny Ramirez, then blow the tires on their already mediocre season; The Olympic experience once again; the beach...and Dona Barbara. All while waiting for another radio opportunity to develop.

A SMALL NOTE ON POLITICS

The Democratic National Convention opened this week in Denver. Conventions are simply known by acronyms, now. Opening night at the DNC was reviewed by pundits as slow and lethargic...but then they are apparently paid for opinions, whether they are valid or not. I was struck by the historic juxtaposition of a video presentation, then a warm welcome for former President Jimmy Carter; and a surprise speech by Teddy Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, earlier this year, had surgery and has been undergoing radiation and chemotherapy in hopes to extend his life for as long as possible. I recalled that in 1980, there was a polarity between these two men that split the party and helped Ronald Reagan to a landslide. Here, 28 years later, there they were celebrated one after the other--the former President for his work helping the poor and hungry around the world, and the ailing Senator for his legislative work and roll as heart and soul of the party's left. In a word, it was moving.