It’s costing plenty, but the SABC won’t be winning any medals for its Olympic coverage, writes Justin Pearce
THE South African Broadcsting Corporation will not reveal how much it spent on sending 87 staffers to cover the Olympic Games in Atlanta — amid accusations the quality of the coverage barely justifies sending an SABC team at all.
The SABC’s efforts have been roundly lambasted by sports journalists in South Africa. Chief among the criticisms is that SABC journalists attempt to comment on sports for which they are not qualified, while on the other hand the SABC switches over to foreign network commentary at moments when a homegrown South African perspective would be most valuable.
For example, the SABC relied on New Zealand’s Channel Seven network to interview double gold medallist Penny Heyns. After the interview, Heyns was asked if there was anyone she would like to thank, and she thanked her family and friends back home. The interviewer added “how about a thank you for Channel Seven”, which Heyns conceded, whereupon viewers were taken back to the Topsport studio where anchor Nick Collis remarked bitterly: “How about a big thank you to the Topsport team too?”
South Africa’s hockey match against Malaysia and South African boxer Victor Kunene’s fight against Czech Pavol Polakovic were covered by Australian commentators.
At other times, TV viewers have had to contend with South African commentators referring to boxers simply as “the red one” and “the blue one”, dropping such gems as “the crowd comes from all over the world”, or attempting to comment on lesser-known sports such as judo and showing themselves to be embarrassingly ill-informed about the finer points of the sport.
This was in addition to the minor glitches such as screening times in the small hours being changed at short notice, and footage of swimming appearing over the commentary on the South Africa-Australia hockey match.
Mail & Guardian sports editor Christian Stephen said the SABC broadcast team was guilty of “ill-prepared and inaccurate comments on sports they don’t understand”.
Sunday Times sports editor Cherylin Ireton agreed: “Some of the commentators didn’t have the vaguest clue.”
South African Sports Illustrated editor Matthew Pearce described the quality of the coverage as “shocking”.
The 87-strong team sent to the games breaks down into 48 from Topsport, 15 Airtime staff, 11 from Television News and 12 from SABC Radio. The radio crew comprises two co-ordinators, two news staffers, one technician and nine commentators who among them handle all 11 official languages. In addition to the team of 87 were the commentators for Radio Metro and 5fm who received commercial sponsorship.
SABC liaison officer Marj Murray said she did not think the team was excessive given the task they had to perform. She said presenters had been chosen for their ability to do on-camera presentations, their competence at voice-overs on edited inserts, their aptitude for research, and their ability to do their own make-up for on-camera presentations.