From the editor: The agony of the feature

I can’t stand the Olympics. Or, to be more precise, I can’t stand Olympic television coverage.

The competition can be thrilling. Even the biathalon—that bizarre combination of cross country skiing and target shooting—challenges the fitness, mental focus and skill of athletes involved.

But for every minute skis skid through man-made white powder snow, for every gentle shove propelling a curling stone down the ice, viewers must endure long stretches of blather. A study conducted by the Philadelphia Inquirer during the 1992 winter games found that in nine hours of coverage presented by NBC every day, only three and a half involved actual competition.

Yes, commercials gobbled up a good chunk of time—just over two hours by their reckoning. The rest was spent of interviews, studio commentary and that scourge of Olympic television, the sappy, feature length personality profile.

Network executive Dick Ebersol is credited (if that is the correct word) with shaping this style, which focuses on personalities and tips the balance away from sports and toward those elements thought (in a chauvinistic age) to appeal to women.

Since he became involved in television coverage of the games, both summer and winter, we’ve been subjected to thousands of these profiles. Backed by sentimental music and produced with an amber hue, each seems to tell the same story of how an athlete overcame adversity to fulfill his or her Olympic dream—whether it was injury, a grandmother suffering from post-nasal drip or a figure skating wardrobe consultant who despised feathers, baubles and bright shiny beads.

OK--to NBC’s credit, the features are shorter this time around. Yet they remain pointless. One, for example, highlight two mothers who--get this--drove their kids to practice and attended figure skating events from the time their Olympian children showed an interest in sports. Although I’ve seen Sidney, Leyton, Potter-Dix, Creek Valley, Peetz and other parents around the panhandle at games near and far, the network apparently thinks the mothers they highlighted are somehow unique.

Before the winter games in Salt Lake City, the network observed that younger viewers preferred just about anything on television but the Olympics. To rectify this, NBC began paying attention to X Games stars. Executives preferred to believe America’s 20-somethings found traditional sports too placid. They did not consider the constant interruption of vapid profiles that strain the patience of anyone with other interests a problem.

Imagine if network coverage of other sports followed the same script. As each hitter approached the plate, the game would be paused in order for a videotaped feature to recall how “Albert Pujols’ mother insisted he eat Brussels sprouts, but he hated them and refused, every day. So for an entire year he went to bed without dessert. Somehow he overcame this adversity to become a major leaguer.”

OK—bad example. That wouldn’t slow modern baseball broadcasts one bit.

Instead, the commissioner’s office should just add home run style points and a French judge to contradict the generally accepted outcome.

So maybe this: “As a child, Peyton Manning was a crier. He bawled every time his older brother laid him out with a clothesline tackle on their backyard gridiron. But Manning rarely cries today…” That’s what would happen during games if the same television logic were applied to NFL coverage. Oddly enough, research suggests that 45 percent of the NFL’s fan base is female. In hockey and NASCAR, the figures are similar. Yet there is no urge on the part of networks presenting those sports to break up the broadcast with saccharine feature material.

Could it be NBC’s impulse was wrong? Ebersol felt that without an emphasis on personalities, women would not tune into the Olympics. Without the women contributing to market share, NBC’s nightly presentation of the games would fall flat, ratings-wise.

Those in charge during the days when three networks ruled the airwaves decided that baseball fans wanted only to watch New York or Los Angeles teams battle it out, that one or two college football games would suffice, that weekend afternoons were best left to nature programming rather than auto racing. Fortunately cable and satellite came along.

Yeah, yeah—I know. Kardashians. Every silver lining has a touch of gray.

Our only recourse would be to switch off, to ignore the weeks of competition until the network agreed to drop the sentimental fluff. But we would have to forego the moments that make the games so compelling. NBC has us in a bind.

I can’t stand it.