American TV. Interestingly enough, American TV is only just going digital. And, the US Govt is giving everyone $40 towards a set top box. This is a good idea. It’s the same brilliant Govt that gave everyone, (virtually anyone who declared taxes), at least $300 back as a “help” in these times of economic crisis - thus costing the country millions and millions of dollars! But that’s another story….
American TV advertisements can be broken done into just a few categories:
1. Ambulance Chasers - lawyers/insurance firms who say they’ll get every cent they can for you after your car crash. Nice.
2 . Colleges - apparently the country is not clever enough and dissatisfied with the jobs they have at the moment. So, everyone is being encouraged to quite and go back to college. Texas seems to be incredibly short of “automotive engineers”, sorry, that’s “garage mechanics” if you’re to believe the many adverts for them.
3. New Illnesses/New Medicines - Every twinge in your body could now be a new illness, and there’s a new medicine for it as well. BUT - they ads do say you should consult with your doctor first. In reality what is actually happening is that doctor’s surgeries are being filled with people DEMANDING these new wonder drugs because they saw it on TV , (so it must be true, right?)
American TV and sports commentary. Never have I seen such a biased and hopeless attempt at covering the Olympics in my life. MSNBC, (or any of the other channels for that matter), do one thing, and one thing alone and that is to show American athletes only, give commentary on American athletes only, and interview American athletes only. The absolute audacity of the American TV networks to spoon feed the US public with this kind of output is appallling. The REST OF THE WORLD is taking part in the Olympics - it isn’t the USAYMPICS.
Example Number One: The Women’s 1500 heats. The American athlete was in third place up until the last few yards when someone overtook her and pinched the automatic third place slot to the final. The commentary - “Oh and someone’s overtook here, but she’ll get to the final with her finishing time”. It then clipped to an interview with the FOURTH place American runner.
Example Number Two: The Japanese women’s softball team absolutely obliterated the USA team. They didn’t just beat them - they ground them into the earth. This was mainly due to the Japanese ladies pitcher who threw an almost perfect game. The commentary: “And the Japanese pitcher made just one mistake in her game….” and then they showed the one mistake which allowed the USA to get a home run. And they never showed any of the Japanese women’s brilliant pitching.
It’s utterly unbelievable. By watching the highlight programmes, (and most of the live events), on American sports channels, you’d think the Olympics were a totally American event with “some other teams” there to make the numbers up.
Now - let’s talk about the BBC…. at least we’d acknowledge there were other teams at the Olympics!
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