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Did NBC Alter the Olympics' Opening Ceremony?
techmuse writes "Viewing the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony online at NBC's Olympics website, you can see that the order in which the countries were presented was very different from the actual order of the countries in the ceremony, as listed at Wikipedia. NBC skipped roughly 100 countries ahead, then jumped back and forth, apparently delaying the appearance of the United States in its home market until later in the broadcast. (In fact, the US team was shown on the infield before they were shown marching!) NBC did not acknowledge this in its broadcast. Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?"
Movie at 11.
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Last Post!!!!
If you are not Windows or Mac, there is no web broadcast.
Gets me thinking, how did a Slashdoter view the web broadcast... Is someone using Windows?
to further nationalistic propaganda. All the medals won by Americans in the past were all actually made of tin. All the better to make hats with!
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
This has been a tradition in Olympic broadcasts for years. It's called editing.
Hi:
I thought only America was in the Olympics. When did they start letting other countries participate?
I looked yesterday for where I could watch Olypics videos. Looks like I needed to instal some plugin from Microsoft that only works with "approved" browsers. Silverlight?
I don't even mind if I'm bombarded with ads to see video. I would even pay for certain footage of one person I know competing in Beijing and some of the events. But a Microsoft player? No thanks.
Now I don't know whether to boycott the Olympic Games because of China ignoring human rights or because it was converted to a festival of commerce. If it goes on like this, I may be soon able to boycott each day of Olympics for a different reason.
If you had RTFA, you would know that's not the issue raised by the submitter. The question isn't how the countries were ordered, it is whether NBC's broadcast actually showed the countries in that order.
"make something up" like apply 3000 year old rules, accepted by all for ordering countries in Mandarin?
... is that I have to actually subscribe to some local TV provider like AT&T, even if I don't own a TV, just so I could watch the NBC Olympics. There is no option for saying I don't have a TV service and to pay the sum they would receive from the local cable company directly to NBC. That is seriously outrageous.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
your gay and youe a newb your gay and youe a newb
Translation:
"Translate Server Error."
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
So no, they didn't make anything up.
I just did a quick check of the recording of the live broadcast that I made. In every spot I checked, the order given on the Wikipedia pages matches the one in the broadcast. So, at least in the case of the broadcasted version, the ordering matches up.
I did, in fact, watch the entire broadcast. The countries were not broadcast in that order. You can find the order in which they actually marched in the wikipedia page. The issue here is that NBC appears to have altered the order of the events themselves. This is different from editing out bits to fit in commercials. The *story* has changed. Example:
1) You get out of your car and walk into a store.
2) You pull up to the store in your car
3) You leave your house and get into your car
4) You drive to the store
5) You leave the store with your purchase.
The correct order is 3,4,2,1,5, but the story told about what you did gives the impression that something very different happened.
Sounds like a Quentin Tarnetino flick.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Oh my, oh my. You mean the TV companies alter reality for marketing purposes? I am shocked.
All those yellow lines that magically appear and disappear on the football fields?
All those "billboards" that are not really there on the stadium wall?
I bet those starlets are even where padded bras. Do you think that they might even have had surgery. Goodness gracious, I wonder if Barbara Walters uses botox?
And those wrestlers. Do you think that they might be using steroids?
I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Actually, the MSNBC online video let's you pick what you want to see and caries a lot of obscure sports from end to end. Much better than listening to Pierre Salinger babble on about wine tasting in all the French villages while you are waiting to see actual athletes.
Statesman
NBC has done an excellent job of insuring that Americans cannot watch the Olympics, the Opening Ceremony and other aspects of what is going on in China. They are the first to bitch and moan about China censorship and just look at what they're doing now! Typical media.
They don't have cable out here so watching anything on the Internet from NBC is just not possible. They have effectively censored millions of Americans from watching the Olympics.
What they do have has been cut up and altered to make room for all that advertising. And, just how many times do I have to hear "Ra Deem Team" from NBC. If I hear it again, I'm going to puke!
Now, there are plenty of NON-AMERICAN web sites with the streams and videos! China has some, Germany has one, and there are others. You get the point... AVOID NBC and you can watch for free!
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Guess, take a breath. Yes, NBC altered the video. They do the same thing when you see movies. They take your beloved movie and ALTER IT!!!!!! They do this to squish down time and show more things.
Now, before we freak out shit out and panic that they are hiding something from you, realize that this stuff is filmed by more cameras then you can even begin to contemplate AND is filled with people from all around the world to serve as witnesses. What does this mean? It is really frigging unlikely that NBC is hiding "the truth" from you. Far more likely, they are trying to shrink a 4+ hour opening ceremony into something that will better fit their schedule.
Worrying that they some how were altering the live feed is so dumb and inane that I can't even respond. People, take a frigging collective deep breath.
Excuse me, are you serious? It's television , FFS! They edit, it's normal. Been going on since at least the 1950s.
This isn't the Dukes of Hazard or even Survivor. This is the Olympics. It's presented as news of the world's supposed ultimate sporting event.
Of course, the cynical among us will note that the psudo-intellectual wrappings of competition and the human condition are just dressing to sell the product. We know this really isn't news but entertainment and that the competition comes a distant third to politics and money. We can all sit around and posture about how we expect this kind of thing. But you don't get an award for being jaded.
***We all point at you and shriek like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers***
Caveat Utilitor
They always use the name collating system native to the hosting nation to create an ascending list.
Yeah but more entertaining & original.
This is more than a bunch of athletes my friend. Go back and watch the opening ceremonies, and tell me that country does not scare the fuck out of you. The level of discipline demonstrated by the performers, the sheer precision of it all... it all far exceeds anything the West could possibly pull off. And that's DAMNED scary.
China is living proof that, if not bound by troublesome concepts like fairness, freedom, and morality, you can achieve great things. That scares the bejesus out of me. The entire Olympic exercise, for China at least, is one of intimidation. Here's them flexing their muscle, showing the world that, at a moment's notice, they can throw away billions, not feel the pinch, mobilize hundreds of thousands of people without any messy bureaucracy, and completely transform the entire city nearly overnight (well, 6 years, that's damned short).
French is one of the official languages. According to the Olympic Charter, "The official languages of the IOC are French and English." But the convention apparently is to introduce countries in alphabetical order in the language of the host country.
I don't care why you're posting AC
And thus, it's still entertainment.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Most Chinese dictionaries actually sort characters first by the radical and then by stoke count within each group of radicals. I'm curious why they used just the stroke count ordering for the Olympics.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
That would just lead to a rash of countries with names like A One Republic and AAA Reliable Nation (well, probably in the French equivalent).
While NBC may well have done what they are accused of (I wouldn't know, the BBC had it all live and unedited), it's not the most insulting thing they've done.
They bribed the Chinese organisers of the Olympics to put certain events early in the morning (local time). The swimming starting soon is an example. Why? So they would be during prime time in America. This sound fair enough, until you realise that prime time in America is THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IN EUROPE. So we get to miss half the events, just so it's a little more convenient for the Yanks. I mean, it's not like we invented the Olympics or anything...
Except in this case it doesn't give the impression that something very different happened since aside from the first and last countries the order that nations appear in the parade has no significance. Still it's a pretty stupid thing to change.
More important to me is that they put ads over the performances in the opening ceremony so we really did not get to see the full performance how it was intended.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
One thing that really hit me was how quickly they were able to expand their airport to accommodate for the Olympics. They now have the world's largest airport terminal, built up in almost no time at all. My home town (Vancouver, Canada) took nearly 20 years to build a single runway, between budget cutbacks, protests by residents, regulatory red tape, etc etc. Meanwhile here's a country that can completely rebuild an airport, make it into the world's largest, and still have time to make it an architectural masterpiece, all in 6 years. It's breathtaking and scary.
who regards the west as...savages.
Not really, they regard the West as hypocrites. The state media likes to play up images like Abu Ghraib and the various things going on at Gitmo. It's not entirely baseless, and that's the sad part.
Indeed. I believe the practice started with the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the German newsreels showed only negatives of all of the track and field events, so that a white Jesse Owens could be seen beating the pants off of all the black athletes.
I did, in fact, watch the entire broadcast. The countries were not broadcast in that order.
I watched the entire broadcast (TiVo'd it) and was so impressed, I stayed up until 4am and watched it all over again. While I don't have the countries memorized in the order they appeared, but from what I do remember, it seems about the same as on the Wikipedia article. The US came in about 2/3 of the way down the list in the broadcast and they're #139 of 204 in Wikipedia (or roughly 2/3 of the way down the list).
I did notice that a number of small countries got very short screen times and seemed "clipped", so I guess they edited out some content to shorten up the whole thing.
you don't get an award for being jaded.
Actually, you do.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
According to friends in Europe, who watched the ceremonies live NBC totally used FAKE CROWD noise.
Apparently Vladimir Putin from Russia got the biggest crowd applause all night when they showed him on the big screen, and the Iraq athletes were given loud BOO's.
And all we heard all night long were the exact same levels of 'monotone cheering' on the NBC broadcast.
Don't believe ANYTHING you see on TV, especially if they had 12 hours to make changes,edits,lies.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
The part where you pay at the cashier must have been edited out to make room for a commercial.
> Of course, the order of events in the news is only trivial.
Yeah, right! Next you'll be telling me Iraq went something like this:
(1) U.S. troops invaded Iraq and overthrew the governement
(3) Iraqis attacked U.S. troops
Oh, wait...
It's just rather hard to get that kind of support going...
Damn right, especially these days, where the lack of the fear of communism has made driving these massive projects impossible. The problem is that the West requires consensus (or at least something resembling it) to do anything of that scale. China just has to have one guy snap his fingers.
Absolute power, when wielded by someone who knows how to use it, is very, very dangerous for his neighbours.
Most Chinese dictionaries actually sort characters first by the radical and then by stoke count within each group of radicals.
Fool! Look at the government sanctioned sites! There are NO radicals in China!
No free radicals, you mean. Which is why Chinese always look so healthy and young.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
How in gods name did people get the impression that this was a news? It called the opening ceremony. It is entertainment. News shows do not typically feature fireworks, dance performances, hundreds of syncronized drummers, a man on a cable running through the air to light a giant torch, or any of the rest of the ceremony. Because, it was a ceremony for the purpose of entertaining us.
An upside-down flag is an international signal of distress.
Indeed, and I found Lin Hao carrying it a wonderful symbol of China's acknowledgement of the distress it experienced after the earthquake and the way in which China has finally become internationally open enough to let others know of its pain and to ask for assistance. The ceremony was full of contrasts, and the upside-down flag was just one more: the proud and powerful China walking next to the fragile and weak China that needs help (who is finally not afraid to ask for it). I found this and the other symbolism of the opening ceremony extremely moving.
In context of a political display, that kid was basically saying "My government hasn't even begun to help rebuild my village after the earthquake".
How did you interpret China parading both its strength and weakness, and the fact that it wants to display both to the world at this, one of its most important international moments, an anti-government message? How could you watch the almost unbelievable near-perfection of the rest of the ceremony (the printing press, the Tai Chi masters...) and think the flag could be an accident? It's really quite a stretch of the imagination.
There's a message in there about Chinese culture, too, and I don't think it was the one they wanted to send.
To me, they sent exactly the message I imagine they wanted to send. Perhaps they did fail at sending their message. But, if so, it was not a matter of the upside-down flag not being planned. Their failure would be that they expected you and the Western world to understand that their asking for help and letting their weakness and tragedy be seen is as important as a show of strength at the games.
Perhaps the government-run media did crop the flag from the images released within China to manage the internal interpretation. Perhaps it was a controversial decision that not everyone important knew about ahead of time, and that someone with power disapproved of after seeing. I'm not saying that this symbolism matches at all how the government operates, even if it seems to be moving in that direction. I'm not saying that it's part of the government's ideology or plan. But for what it is not, it is a powerful message that is hard to believe was not deliberate and planned at some type of government-approved level.
You are correct--I couldn't ever imagine seeing a US flag upside-down in an international ceremony. That's why I was especially touched to see China acknowledge their distress and their need for assistance in a way that my own country never would.