Oh, yes, I remember Albertville

Bruce:

Thanks {grr} for reminding me of the coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics. I cannot think of those games without being taken back to that faux rustic fire "roaring" in the background. And Tim McCarver, who managed a transition similar to the one Costas made (from my personal admiration to disdain), trying to pull off this folksy Southerner thing while in France. That was one of the more embarrassing attempts that I can recall.

Paula Zahn, toothy and leggy and at first nice to look at, rubbed me the wrong way shortly after she started to speak. There is something about her delivery that I just don't like. I didn't like her (TAKE NOTE, DAN!) when she had a prime time show on Fox News. This was when Fox was new to our cable line-up (sometime around 2000, I think), and everyone was talking about it (it reminded me of the buzz around Rush Limbaugh, circa 1992). I watched her show a bit, and Greta's, and thought: I don't get what all the excitement is about, these shows stink. I still prefer Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson to Hannity & Colmes and O'Reilly. However, I'll take Britt Hume over any broadcast newscaster, and I'll take Fox on the whole over MSNBC (even with their better primetime lineup) or any other news outfit on the tube.

Anyway, back to Albertville, I remember thinking that Zahn was trying to shoot for glamor and glitz, and McCarver for down-homey-ness. The fire in the background was such an artificial touch that it was hard to watch without being acutely aware of just how hard CBS was working to create atmospherics, which meant that their attempt to create atmospherics was doomed to utter failure. Kind of like NBC's coverage of the "Giuochi da Torino".