Olympian Oaffery from Quinn & McBeth: TVNZ's lobotomised commentary
TVNZ are hopeless judges of taste. The Olympic opening ceremony commentary was an aesthetic armageddon. Were they standing there in singlets and gumboots?Thousands of men dressed as Confuscious, massed displays of the Chinese history of writing, printing and navigation that would make the Japanese envious - and we have Keith Quinn and John McBeth polluting the atmosphere of the mind with inane observations and clueless remarks. Rugby-head knuckle-draggers butchering a cultural event. It was cringe-inducing.
They didn't know when to shut up, they didn't know when to speak, they were hopeless. Typically hopeless. Every Olympics, every Commonwealth games are ruined by the same bloody morons: Quinn and McBeth, courtesy of TVNZ - our national broadcaster. We all know how it goes because that's the way it always goes with these events:
Quinn sits there with his notes and then proceeds to ruin every audience surprise by telling us what amazing and surprising thing will happen an infuriatingly annoying 5 to 10 to 30 seconds seconds before it happens. Every time he does this every time. Every. Fucking. Time.
McBeth will mumble away about A only to find that it's B a moment later.
Quinn will interject with some obscure fact about Botswana.
Then the two remind us of their shrivelled IQ by ad libbing on the thousands of years of whatever culture it is in terms of the pretty colours. Morons.
The sound of the thrashing drums and the waves of voices from the audience as it peaked again and again in nationalist fervour were impressive. The massed drills and communist-styled slogan shouting was nicely counter-pointed by imaginative flourishes that created dynamic and vivid displays. Very impressive. The planet going red and Chinese tyconauts (spacemen) floating around spoke of ambitions for Mars and world domination - but our pair of resident TVNZ oratorical implosions were still tangled in each others mumbling, off-topic digressions.
Their govt. minder even got McBeth to say as an aside that many people in Taiwan want to join back up with the Mainland! What a clueless, moronic, numpty. But topped, naturally, by Keith Quinn's ruining the olympic flame moment. Now he's done so many he's got to look for new ways to ruin it. This time he did it by getting all excited about the athlete who will light the cauldron, saying how great he was and how everyone knows him and what a great record he has. He starts this before the athlete is even in view to keep with his policy of spoiling every surprise moment. All the time he doesn't say the guy's name. (It goes without saying that neither he nor we know who this person is). And this guy's half way up to lighting the thing and finally Quinn says "Le Ni... Nin.. Lee Nin..ng(?). The great - Lee... Ning." (or whatever - that's pretty close). What a fucking idiot! He totally massacred the name - but only after taking an age to find on his notes who this person was - or how to pronounce their name. Because Quinn is an idiot. IDIOT!
And where was the translator/govt. minder when the Mayor of Beijing decided to give us an eight-hour long Castro speech. It took ages and no translator, no Quinn or McBeth to tell us what he was going on about in Mandarin. No subtitles. It's like they got off their fat arses to tuck into the media buffet at precisely the point they needed to do something. Why couldn't they have both fucked off during fifteen minutes of the interesting cultural/historical/artistic/musical part that they butchered with their fucking white noise bullshit. The idiot McBeth - doing his own commentary curse shocker - mumbled just before the speeches that "they'll be very short". Wrong. And they'll also be in Mandarin without any translation. TVNZ - FFS.
Commentary of the type appropriate for this event involves intellect and sophistication - it's not a sports game. TVNZ have no understanding. They fire Quinn from commentating rugby - something he does know something about - and put him on fucking up the olympic coverage by making him commentate on things he obviously knows absolutely nothing about. Classic TVNZ. Wheel out the dinosaurs for a show about computers.
No shit they're shit. TVNZ's coverage could only have been made worse if Tony Veitch was involved. And he would have been had his girl-bashing not been exposed. So thanks, TVNZ, for planning on ruining and then actually ruining another Olympics. Shit heads.
Anyway, on a lighter note:
Official Olympic medals table. On the same site is a comprehensive list of all the competing athletes - personal data, previous results etc. (example above - she has been the basketball team's main weapon for several years, and was on court just now helping to beat the Mali team). Very impressive site.So, no I'm not boycotting the Olympic Games Beijing 2008. The guy sitting next to Rogge at the opening, the old IOC President who gave China the games, is a Spanish Fascist. They might have got the games through bribes. The host country is a supporter of repression at home and abroad. There are many reasons not to support the games. It has been said that participating will give support to the Chinese communist regime. I doubt watching it provides any such level of support.
posted by Tim Selwyn @ 4:48 pm
7 comments
7 Comments:
I am in total agreement. They were so fucking infuriating. It was a great ceremony but I felt like turning it off because of those two. I was hoping that a producer or someone was going to come in and unplug their microphones. You think these two would do a little research or something with a job like this but no. Every invention they didn't know. Every name they couldn't pronounce. How much are these guys getting paid for this?
But surely that is representative of NZ, if you had imported an intelligent, informative commentary NZ'ers would not have been able to understand it, a country of semi-literate (at best) morons need moronic commentators. If they had been drunk it would have been truly NZ.
Kim Hill is the only NZ broadcaster worth listening to - and she's English.
These two bit countries need to swallow their ego and pride and admit they do not have the ability, experience or resources for quality broadcasting and accept overseas feeds and/or import some talent.
Think yourself lucky it could be even worse, at least you don’t have quotas there so you do have access to quality programming from overseas a lot of the time, you also have free-to-air BBC World overnight. In Australia their xenophobic, pride requires national (racist) quotas – apparently Big Brother is good TV as long as the venue is in Australia and the participants are Australians.
PS: If you think NZ was bad anyone catch the Australian effort – even worse, mind you at least they kept fairly quiet for some of it.
I agree, the commentary was pretty banal but not really that surprising. There's an interesting rebutal from Quinn over on the TVNZ website - it's still no excuse for being so pointless.
On the flip side I think TVNZ should be commended for their live streaming channels online. Having four channels to choose from instead of just one makes the games so much more accessible - especially if you can't stand seeing another swimming or rowing heat.
I don't know a lot about the interwebs but I'm amazed at the quality and speed of the high res feeds. I live in Featherston and on weeknights and weekends having broadband means still having to wait for videos (be it TV3 or youtube) to load up before you can watch them without it freezing up. But this really was stunning - a few seconds buffering and then it was pretty much as good as the TV1 quality. Bit hard on the old data downloads but we're lucky enough still to be on the long since defunct telecom go large plans.
>>PS: If you think NZ was bad anyone catch the Australian effort – even worse, mind you at least they kept fairly quiet for some of it.<<
Thats the thing though, isn't it ?
Are we THAT stupid we need a commentary for a show ?
What's next ? commentaries on concerts ?
" now the oboe player is picking up his oboe .... then the drummer will have a bash ..."
WTF !!
They should have just SHUT UP and let us enjoy it
A picture is worth a thousand words - but not according to Quinn and McBeth. Like other Olympics, they insisted on describing what we could SEE on our screens.
And they did it so often - intruding like two unwelcome guests at a party and spoiling it for everyone else. They just couldn't shut up.
Quinn, who must spend hours on Wikipedia, also likes to throw in all kinds of fact and trivia - this counts, apaparently, for 'informed comment'.
The nonsensical and hysterical McBeth -now ruining the swimming coverage - thought everything was 'great', 'fantastic', and just, well, 'great' (again).
At every sporting event Mcbeth goes into cheerleader role = he truly reached a new low at the last America's Cup - but he lookes like he's going be even worse this time round.
Why are these two buffons brought out at every Olympics?
At the very start, just as the golden light circled the rim of the stadium, in jumped Quinn with some irrelancy to set the tone. If he was a rower, he'd have turned turtle at the start with the bloke lying down still holding on to his stern. In fact, if it had been me, I'd have turned over his bloody boat. It was embarrassing, infuriating and iredeemable, since we will never get another look at those pictures and music without that appalling effort. The chinese lady at least offered something interesting,but if these two were the best New Zealand has in the way of commentary, then why not just stream in the British effort and admit the Poms do some things better than anyone else. We could have had Quinn jump in for two minutes when the kiwis arrived, but by then no-one else gave a shit anyway.. though "big bloke in sheepskin though it's 35 degrees" might have roused some views.
His "explanation" on his web site was pathetic - gosh, 140 pages of notes provided mainly by the Olympic PR team and he had to master all that AND cause a mess on the floor. "It's your bloody job, mate and you made a total bollocks of it". It was lazy, unintelligent and a disgrace to the country.
"It has been said that participating will give support to the Chinese communist regime. I doubt watching it provides any such level of support."
Seriously Tim where the fuck do you come up with these little gems? Do you even think before you write?
Would you say that people watching childporn vids from the comfort of their own home that they have downloaded provide no support for pedophiles who make it. Watching and paying for this kind of material, as you do with the olymics, supports the activity of kiddy fucking. Why do you think so many MNC's work out exclusive advertising contract with the olymics - for the fucking audience numbers.
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