NBC Shows its Respect for Olympic Cycling By Using Liggett and Sherwin as Commentators
Kudos to NBC for employing Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin to anchor cycling coverage in the 2004 Summer Olympics. I laughed when I heard them come on the air, initially thinking to myself didn't they have any broadcasters on their permanent staff who new anything about cycling?
The more I thought about it, the more I came to think that this was actually a very respectful move on the part of NBC. They had probably arranged for Liggett and Sherwin to call the road cycling races back when Lance Armstrong was still on the U.S. Olympic Team. Imagine if Lance had ridden in this race, millions had tuned in, and they hadn't had a knowledgeable team of announcers.
As it was with Paolo Bettini, Sergio Paulinho, and Axel Merckx on the medal stand, NBC needed the A-Team to provide details to viewers. Neither of them knew much about Paulinho anyway.
I didn't get to watch all of the NBC coverage of the men's road race, but the parts that I did see were quite professionally done.
Comments
was the audio levels on the broadcast you saw all screwed up? We couldn't tell if it was just our cable company somehow or what but on all the olympic coverage we saw the day of the road race the voices were at a way low volume and the normally background stuff like crowds and music were much louder.. we could barely hear good ole' Phil and Paul.
Did you catch Troutwig doing gymnastics?
Posted by: josh | August 16, 2004 9:08 AM