TV GOLD LIVE, AS IT HAPPENS. SORTA.

Since my last blog I’ve been chatting with other producers about the Olympic coverage, and a couple of them suggested I watch the shows ‘Live’, rather than the terribly put together clip show they’ve been putting on in prime-time.  

Now, this enterprise means some painstaking ‘watching of entire events’, and the all too complex to understand ‘inclusion of some other people’. Mainly it involves staying up late.  

So, anyway, I have been watching as much ‘live’ Olympic fun as I could.

On Saturday, I sat eagerly watching the ‘live show’ on NBC from 7.30pm, ready to witness Michael Phelps go for  his place in Olympic megastardom history by winning his eighth Gold.  

Everything was set. Beer in hand, curtains shut, pants off. …What I mean, of course, is that I was totally keyed up and there for it. I was ready. I was totally in ‘watching history’ mode, (generally a ‘pants off situation’, I think you’ll agree).

The graphic up at the top right said “LIVE”, and we all knew it was taking place sometime in the evening – the news was all about it all day. So, there I sat, waiting for the “Live-in-Primetime” event.

I sat in my chair, from 7pm, happy to watch all those products being sold to us because Michael Phelps was coming up live at any minute. Oooh goody. Here he comes… Any minute.  

By 9.30 I was beginning to do sums on my fingers, doing the complicated ‘just add 15’  math to work out what time it would be in Beijing. I even went on-line to double check my math… and then… it happened.  The cardinal sin of ‘live’ global events.  

Right there on my computer screen was the CNN latest news headline “Michael Phelps Swims to 8 Olympic Golds”.  

I stared at the screen for a moment – whipped my head back to the NBC coverage. It definitely said “LIVE” in the top right of the screen. Back to CNN… “….Swims to….”. I snapped my hand out and turned off the computer screen, half hoping I’d head off the information I’d read at the pass, stopping it from actually seeping into my brain.  

Nope. It was too late. I’d just seen the result.

Without passing on the news to my other half, I asked her if she could read the word “LIVE”? She said she could. I waited for the next ad break and turned off the DVR in case we’d accidentally hit pause at some point in the afternoon and were watching tv with a lag.  Nope.

The painful, awful truth of it was still there. I knew the result.

By this point my other half had rumbled that something was wrong, that I knew the result; and was now holding her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut tight, and singing a loud song about ‘not wanting me to speak to her or even look at her’ until after the race.  

Like the ‘Live finals’ of American Idol, (where it’s actually only ‘live’ on the East Coast and delayed for the West Coast), any ‘live show’ which is only live in half of the country is no live show. What they should have called this  was a “recording of something which happened three hours ago, sucks to be you, California” show.

Someone, please tell me, why is it that I have a bloody V-Chip in my TV because some religious nut got concerned that they have so little control over their household that their TV’s off switch might not work; Janet Jackson flashes a ropey star-clad tit for a few none-too arousing frames and the FCC light up burning torches and march on Justin Timberlake’s house; but a major, historical event gets recorded and passed off to half the nation as ‘LIVE’ - and everyone seems to think it’s ok?

How the hell can they put that LIVE sign up in the right hand side of the screen and then NOT screen it live?

Someone tried to calm me down by telling me they did roll a tiny little graphic underneath the big LIVE sign which read: “EST/CENTRAL”. That was their caveat. “LIVE: SORTA”.

What’s to stop them running that logo over EVERYTHING to make it feel more ‘real’ and keep their audience? “Tonight, in Primetime: Mission to the Moon: LIVE: As it Happens: (C1969)”.  Or worse, recording EVERYTHING, then watching it all, coming up with a plan of how to play it out, and then screening it at their leisure as ‘live’, a couple of days later - or a week. Hey, why not stock-pile the news like a grain mountain, just tease it out when we get desperate. Or just live a year behind things actually happening?

Why not start with the elections. Or the weather forecasts? Cut out all the incorrect stuff and only tell us the stuff that they know is going to be important sometime down the road.

What made me the MOST angry about this was that the race, it seems, DID actually happen while I was sitting there watching TV on Saturday night. It was happening LIVE as I was sitting there patiently slipping off my trousers and popping open my beer – our friends in NYC saw it live, so why is it we weren’t allowed to see it live?  

I don’t know about you, but for me there’s some extra special importance to watching things live – something about the unpredictability, about the idea that we’re not able to change events, subvert them or rewrite them. Additionally, because it’s live, we’re part of the story, we become part of the moment. The history making moment.  It’s also part of the group dynamic of the event, the all important shared human experience.

Where were you when  Kennedy got shot? “I was in California and I watched it three hours after it happened. But it’s OK, it felt almost like I’d seen it live because the adverts were all the same”.  

And this is the reality – the reason they didn’t show it live, as they could have done, is because they knew we’d wait. And while we’re waiting for the event, we’d be watching commercials. And while we’re watching commercials we’re all buying.

And at the end of the day, I guess I have to grow up and admit, that’s exactly why NBC love all this ‘Olympic Gold’ stuff.