There are parts of Australia that have access to only a single television channel, that of the Australian Broadcasting Corpporation. The ABC has been reasonably happy to submit to IOC restrictions on the amount of time they can spend on Olympics events and interviews with athletes (and they are very restrictive restrictions!). But what irks them truly are the additional restrictions that have been sought by and granted to the NBC. A US broadcaster has managed to ensure that the Australian public television station is not only handcuffed but chained to the wall, that thousands of Australians have even less access to their own Games than the IOC would allow them. And what do you suppose the NBC's viewer-blocking tactics do for public opinion of the US, here in the land of Oz? USers aren't even likely to hear about it though, eh, that's how much heartburn it'll give ya. (Let me know if I'm wrong about that!)
The ABC is gallantly retaliating with gentle sarcasm. It is they who've been running the satirical program, The Games, and in today's noontime news they showed a slo-mo video segment of Michael Knight (SOCOG head honcho) with Juan Antonio (Franco's Boy) Samaranch, shaking hands, opening doors for him, looking pathetically gracious, in the background the soupy music: "Look at me... I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree...etc". Cute. But seriously bad news that the US should be allowed to moon its big fat arse this far from home.
You'll have noticed if you saw them that the opening ceremonies were exploitative of local 40,000-year-old colour, making off with the Mama Earth/Noble Savage symbolics without shame. (And the songs, the SONGS! Bleagh. What I would have given to've heard the Internationale.) But what a torch-lighting, hey? Ba-da-BOOM. I can just see the Greeks pissing themselves, wondering how they're gonna top that in 2004. Sigh. That's one of the stupid things about the games: all this topping-the-last-guy that has to go on. Mize well be a bunch of dogs trying to piss higher on the tree than the last one did (the 12" Terrier standing on his forelegs and propping his back legs against the trunk). I've watched bits of nostalgic rebroadcasts in the last couple of weeks: the 1948 games in England (it rained constantly), the 1956 games in Australia (tiny crowd). And, simplemindedly enough, I've wished for those relatively simple times. Sport has always been more likely to benefit the sponsors than the athletes I suppose -- witness the Roman Circus. And I don't guess those Spartans LIKED wearing a copper wire around their bellies. (But really, guys: the beautiful sight of a runner in simple un-logo'd whites, loping alone along a tree-lined road in the Australian outback, torch in hand, on his way to Melbourne in '56...)
The television station called SBS (also a public station, though with some corporate funding), shows news programs in several different languages every morning. This morning the Italians were dewy-eyed but brief about the Games; the Germans devoted their "Theme of the Day" almost exclusively to Olympics practicalities (managing to get in a dig at the Sydney taxi drivers' low standards of hygiene); the Greeks were ecstatic and devoted half their program to a rebroadcast of the opening hoopla; the French spent most of their time in Redfern (a run-down Sydney neighborhood which is the only place in Sydney you're likely to encounter Aboriginals in any number), interviewing the single Aboriginal senator, who was boycotting the games, and some mildly militant neighborhood folk. Yesterday the French news also spent a good 5 minutes of their 30 in Redfern, whereas the rest of the international news teams, when they mentioned the Olympics, spoke only of the excitement in anticipation of.
So there you have it from this end. Well, my end of this end.
cheers, Jo