Is Belinda Noonan the NBC livestream commentator? I watched the livestream last night and it was a relief not to have to listen to Johnny/Tara. If that was Belinda, I agree she has a rather different voice for a commentator, but it didn't bother me and I thought her comments were quite good and fair and balanced. (
@aftershocks What errors do you feel she has made?)
I've never heard of Noonan before. Her voice is okay, and she was overall fairly low-key and balanced. But I found it all a bit colorless. She had some interesting things to say on occasion. What bothered me was that more often than not Noonan got many technical observations wrong, e.g., she was inaccurate quite a bit when skaters made jumping errors. Noonan would think it was a single when it was a double, or she thought skaters did a fine job on triples when there was a double or a slight touch down. She didn't accurately cite that T/M had a minor crash on their quad twist dismount in the fp, and a number of other mistakes throughout the figure skating events. I didn't take notes so I can't be more specific at the moment. But quite often viewers could see on screen how an element was being scored which differed from what Noonan was saying. That was my biggest beef about Noonan. And just in general, she was not lively and neither was her cohost.
There has to be a happier ground somewhere in the middle between Noonan's approach and T&J's off-putting 'video game' extravaganza.
In general, I do agree with you
@clairecloutier that the NBC livestream commentators are perhaps somewhat of a relief from T&J's worst excesses. Terry does the best he can under the circumstances. I fault all three of them for their overly critical comments toward J/C in the sp before J/C even skated. Maybe they were thinking J/C weren't going to perform well and they needed to prepare the audience?
But that's just the wrong way to go about it. They should know how much J/C and their coaching team have enlivened and contributed to the pairs discipline over the past couple of seasons, and in the process elevated their careers.
Speaking of J/C's coaching team, I also think it's a shame that Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford have not yet to my knowledge publicly credited John Z and John Kerr for their assistance. I know Meagan felt overly criticized when they announced the coaching changes they were making. But they are the ones who made the change and it seemed to have helped on the part-time basis they entered into, so why haven't they ever acknowledged how they feel the change helped them in their final season?! I understand why John Z hasn't appeared with them in the kiss 'n cry, but at least acknowledge his & John Kerr's input in some way. That said, once again I give heartfelt thanks to Meagan for her love & support of animals and for helping another Korean dog destined for the meat market, find a home.
Kudos to Meagan and Eric on a great Olympics! They should be so proud of their accomplishments!
Regarding TT&J, I agree with some of Dave Lease's comments on TSL Twitter and in the recent
Deadspin TSL profile, where Lease is quoted:
"... now that they’re starring in NBC’s primetime Olympics show, Lease thinks they should be taking themselves more seriously. He says he finds them 'awkward' to watch. He argues that they don’t have the intellect or gravitas of, say, a Dick Button, and so they fail to provide the appropriate level of weight to the viewing experience.
'It’s not that skating’s not outrageous, because it is, but they almost make a joke out of it,' Lease told me. 'There seems to be a layer where they’re more impressed with themselves covering the event than they are about the actual event and the skaters.'"
Of course the funny part about the above critique is that Dave often is guilty of doing the same thing! He too often makes TSL about himself and his own ego, even if that's not his intent.
I disagree with Lease's constant, relentless snark though, toward Johnny especially. Lease sometimes goes overboard as usual, and he needs to take a step back and examine his own shortcomings.
For me, it's not that TT&J don't on occasion have good insights or reasonable things to say, it's just that T&J's shtick is played out in regard to how they are covering figure skating in primetime. What they did four years ago was cool and edgy. It got them the primetime jobs which led to their featured airtime during coverage of other sports including football, horse racing, Rio Summer Olympics, and the Westminster Dog Show. They do a lot of good work with the combined 'synchronistic cultural icon personalities' approach they take, but that works better in one-off skits and features. They haven't seemed to be as interested in delving more into improving the way they cover figure skating. That would require them doing a lot more homework, and thinking outside the box creatively in terms of coverage, and not as much re their own sartorial excesses.
TT&J are also hamstrung by NBC's same-old, same-old approach to figure skating. Instead of always looking for lame storylines and hooks, NBC needs to offer something more interesting and insightful about all of the skaters, along the lines of Ted Barton's and Dick Button's more informed approaches. But that would require more extensive knowledge, which would mean a lot of advance homework beyond the superficial hype-driven directions NBC cluelessly favors. There was way too much overfocus on the North Koreans because of the political situation, and the observations were superficial at that (a lot of comments by Tara on how Ryom was feisty and had a smile on her face). Another egregious example is how Johnny kept trotting out the same story about Sui/Han and how he'd toured with them a year and a half ago when Sui was recovering from foot surgery, and Han guided her out on the ice in a wheelchair.
It was interesting the first time we heard it, and a nice reminder the second time. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth times
Please shutup already!!! You aren't saying anything that gives us any entertaining, provocative or substantial insight. And so, it becomes a lose-lose for figure skating as a whole. Casual fans are being fed lame, superficial, & sometimes off-base trivial crap, which provides scant understanding of the skaters and the scoring system, while diehard fans know way more than you do and are at home tearing their hair out and screaming at the television screen. And that's not how it should be.
Even the online
Olympic Ice coverage by NBC, while competent and very welcome, is kept constrained within a status quo box. I can sense Ben Agosto and Charlie White chafing to get out of that box but it's difficult when the host doesn't have a huge amount of background in figure skating. The female host does seem enthusiastic, and granted she is skilled at sequing and making superficial 'tied-up with a bow' soundbite summaries. I hunger for more. But nope Johnny, miming on NBC primetime as the
Hunger Games mean host, does not cut it for me.
I would be interested in hearing how CBC, Tatiana Tarasova along with Russia commentators, Japanese broadcasters, and Eurosport commentators have been covering the figure skating in Pyeongchang! Was there any better coverage going on anywhere?
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