The first two answers are “short people lifting enormous weights over their heads” and “Kitty Chiller”. The questions that prompt them are “What do you want to see more of in Seven’s Australian Olympic coverage?” and, well, “What do you want to see less of in Seven’s Australian Olympic coverage?” In those respects at least, the host network has so far triumphed.
But first to matters of practicality and scorn. Unlike the London Games four years ago, this time Australians are not able to indulge in the multi-channel splendour of Foxtel’s supplementary coverage, with rights holders Seven maintaining exclusivity to spread the action (at least in theory) over three digital channels of their own. In what must have seemed a straightforward exercise at planning stage, they augmented the old-fashioned TV coverage with a loudly-trumpeted, once-off-payment $20 streaming app that has promptly cacked itself for most of the first week of competition, leaving significant numbers of Australians stranded without coverage.
The people, unsurprisingly, are not happy, and have descended on the reviews sections of the GooglePlay and iTunes stores with the type of icy vengeance normally seen from Russian judges in the gymnastics arena. If they could have seen or heard it, neither would they have been impressed by the apology offered early in the piece by Seven host Jim Wilson, who prefaced the network’s mea culpa with a head-wobbling boast about their booming TV viewership figures – like a fish ‘n chip shop proprietor regaling you with an account of his daily takings instead handing over the dinner you just paid for.
Instead, huge swathes of the population have swapped glorious Olympic action for the sight of their own crumpled, rage-filled faces reflecting back at them from blank iPad screens. At that angle, not even Gisele Bündchen can avoid self-loathing. In lieu of a solution, by Tuesday Seven’s Basil Zempilas doubled down on the bragging and claimed the digital venture had been “downloaded in record numbers,” which was both ill-advised and about as plausible as the IOC-generated myth that three billion people watch the opening ceremony.
On that topic, there was something drily amusing about Fernando Meirelles producing the kind of prolonged, advertiser-spooking global warming rant against which commercial networks would normally recoil. The less said about Zempilas, Bruce McAvaney and Johanna Griggs’ recitation of the Brazilian tourist board script the better. Might they have gently queried the host nation’s occasionally selective interpretation of history, from which the Wright brothers, for one, were entirely wiped?
The other sin for which Seven has so far copped a not-unjustified pasting is in continuing to provide their standard overgenerous helpings of breakfast show Sunrise. It grinds on uninterrupted even as live sport takes place elsewhere in Rio. But far more fuss should be made of the ludicrous situation on weekdays between 5pm and 7pm, when Seven’s three channels are quite astonishingly an Olympics-free zone, what with all those episodes of American Pickers, Pawn Stars and 60 Minute Makeover to broadcast. Such disdain for viewers is puzzling given the vast amounts of lucre involved in securing Olympic rights in the first place. There is no Olympic flag where TV executives live. They’re lodged in a different planetary realm.
All these logistical farces are a bit of a shame. When it’s actually been available for viewing, the content itself hasn’t been too bad, if hampered by the usual giant splashes of jingoistic swill (can we rule out unhinged patriotism in the mysterious case of the diving pool turning green?). The pillar of the operation is In Rio Today, the network’s two-hour nightly studio highlights recap. In that, Hamish McLachlan is doing his usual snappy job wandering around a circular podium as a dizzying series of graphics swirl around him. The only shame is that these visual aids often contain dot points of the lines he’s about to read out on cue, rather than something useful like a medal tally or a schedule of upcoming events. It also makes McLachlan look like he’s performing the world’s least essential TED Talk. As with hosts using touch screens, this is another in the long line of needless scourges we must tolerate in modern sports broadcasting.
Seven’s other hosts are a mixed bag, though as long as the big events are actually being shown live we could probably put up with Warwick Capper and an animatronic kangaroo back in the studio. You don’t have to have been an athlete to describe them, of course, but it seems to have helped Jim Wilson’s career that he at least sounds like one, and an Oss-straylee-unn at that. “We can catch our breath now,” Wilson said at one point as he read out a series of tweets sent on behalf of Michael Phelps’ infant child. It must be exhausting. Much more broadcasterly, ironically, is the work of former jocks Griggs and Todd Woodbridge, while other hosts such Kylie Gillies and Mel McLaughlin have been solid contributors too .
That’s mostly left Mr Olympics Bruce McAvaney to cool his jets until the athletics events commence, perhaps a good thing while he’s comparing Phelps to Sir Donald Bradman. The sight of McAvaney wearing a gaudy polo shirt was also slightly disconcerting. Wasn’t he born in a network blazer and tie?
As for the actual commentary, unfairly maligned Zempilas and his analyst Giaan Rooney have been, periodic abandonment of impartiality aside, a decent combo in the swimming. Zempilas has mostly resisted the verbose Norman Mayisms of some predecessors and Rooney sounds a hell of a lot happier talking about swimmers lapping up and down a pool very quickly than in other TV roles she’s filled. Funny that. The only time Zempilas truly grates is when he overreaches in search of gravitas. “There’s the record book, then there’s the Michael Phelps book!” he bellowed as the American won the 200m butterfly gold. Not one we’d read, Baz.
Undoubtedly helped by the compelling performance of the Australian women’s team, Mark Braybrook has been a clear and concise caller of the Rugby Sevens, a compelling spectacle that has revealed itself as ripe for further televisual exploitation, especially with characters as genuinely appealing as Sharni Williams, Charlotte Caslick and Ellia Green. Australia claimed medals in trap shooting and archery too but for all the combined skill and vague sense of danger in those events, in TV terms you suspect they’d be out-rated by surveillance footage from a golf driving range.
Of the other expert callers, Debbie Watson has been our favourite for explaining the myriad tactical permutations of water polo, which, with no disrespect intended to our glorious Olympians, otherwise appears an entirely lawless game of poison ball played by swimming team delinquents. Over at the equestrian, Martin Gostelow was to our inexpert ears absolutely perfect for his role, in that he sounds like a man who also plays royal tennis and applies his shaving cream with a badger-hair brush.
The support cast have been energetic enough too. Given the plum job of sideline interviewer at the pool, perma-ecstatic Nathan Templeton peaked early in the role of official specs-holder for golden boy Mack Horton, but crashed back to earth on day two when he misread Emma McKeon’s failure to win a medal in the 100m butterfly final as a moment of mild jubilation and not, as was actually the case, a personal nightmare of tearful proportions. As the awkwardness dawned upon Templeton and he deftly retreated, you wanted to hug both of them. Fortunately they were reunited in happier circumstances when McKeon claimed bronze on Wednesday. It’s a long haul, the swimming.
The other podium effort so far has come from Seven’s roving news reporter Chris Reason, who doggedly pursued Chinese hero Sun Yang in the wake of his headline-grabbing imbroglio with Horton. Reason’s sustained prodding was rewarded when the swim star eventually stopped in his tracks and snapped: “I don’t know, what is Horton?” There are many ways to avenge a loss but denying your opponent’s very existence is certainly a novel gambit.
When assessing their various disasters so far, maybe Seven management can look to the Aussies in action for inspiration. Speaking of one mishap by the women’s synchronised diving pair, who couldn’t always nail the seemingly fundamental requirement of landing in the water at the same time, analyst Loudy Wiggins cheerfully suggested: “the judges won’t see that.” They did, of course, but the Aussies still took out bronze regardless. For now the broadcasters themselves remain out of medal contention, but not without hope.
