Winning Spirit in TBS Coverage

There’s conflict, but not too much conflict. There’s pomp, but not too much pomp. There’s nationalism, but not too much nationalism.

That’s because this is not the Olympics.

Thank goodness.

Not only are the Goodwill Games not Bigger Than Life, they are even not bigger than “Roseanne” or “Cosby” or “The Simpsons” or Barbara Walters interviewing Roseanne.

Unlike the Olympiad, the Goodwilliad doesn’t have Roman numerals carved into it. This Ted Turner-created minispectacle on cable’s TBS could vanish forever without even a ripple--and may, considering its horrendous financial losses. After the Aug. 5 conclusion of this year’s event in Seattle, the Goodwill Games could pack up their 86 hours of coverage and permanently split as inconspicuously as when they first arrived on TBS in 1986 like an escapee from one of the visionary Turner’s dreams.

TBS likes to tout the Goodwill Games as the ultimate in global warming and glasnostian dovishness. As a sports-on-TV event, however, they’re dispensable. And curiously, that is what makes them likable.

Yes, the TV studio choreography is sometimes stiff, with standing co-hosts Nick Charles and Hannah Storm affixed with Krazy Glue to their spots on opposite sides of the set during nightly live coverage, requiring center-stage anchor Larry King to swivel almost 180 degrees when speaking to them.

And yes, someone, presumably executive producer/director Tony Verna, has attached ostentatious titles--like “Adversarial Billboard”--to simple things like telling viewers about the evening’s matchups.

These are exceptions, however, for one of the things that’s so appealing about the TBS coverage is the absence of the kind of enormous, smothering production typical of Olympics telefasts. No sirens and flashing lights here. No five-alarm fires, either.

While United States athletes are unquestionably central to the coverage, moreover, the TBS treatment is nevertheless long on internationalism and short on the kind of intense jingoism that turned ABC’s 1984 Olympics coverage, and to a lesser extent NBC’s 1988 Olympics coverage, into an electronic Old Glory.

What is this thing about athletes being metaphors for global politics, anyway? Yes, yes, we were all just devastated when the Soviets beat our basketball team. And I don’t know about you, but I was crushed when the Soviets beat our guys in water polo Wednesday night. Now let’s see if a unified Germany will want to join NATO instead of the Warsaw Pact.

Get serious, please. The idea that these athletes are somehow playing for national honor is a media-fashioned illusion and about as silly as those caps that the water polo teams tie on under their chins with little bows.

Are you telling me that most Americans were really pulling for Carl Lewis of the United States to win yet another long jump Wednesday instead of for the Soviet Union’s Robert Emmiyan, whose father was killed and whose home was destroyed in Armenia’s terrible earthquake, and whose mother and brother were watching the competition from an Armenian hotel in the middle of the night?

King interviewed them by satellite, and although the need to go through an interpreter made verbal communication almost impossible, the pictures spoke for themselves.

It was fascinating the way TBS was able to transform this long-jump competition--which some sports reporters found undramatic in person--into a highly dramatic episode of intense human interest and athleticism. One reason was the presence of Emmiyan, another the contributions of that pre-eminent track analyst Dwight Stones. His superb commentary, along with outstanding camera work on the jumpers, helped make this the TV centerpiece of that night’s competition.

Actually, it was the women’s 1,500-meter race that was designated “The Miller (Beer) Moment of the Day,” a bit of commercial nonsense that TBS engages in each night.

The real “moment of the day,” however, came during one of those sidebar stories that TBS is doing to capture the flavor of Seattle. The “moment” was King’s hilarious satellite interview with a man identified as Don, a worker at a Boeing aircraft plant.

King tried to get Don, who was standing in front of a jet, to tell him what he did at the plant. Don stuttered. Then he sputtered.

“Don’t be nervous,” King said. “What, like specifically, did you do on this aircraft?”

“Pardon?” Don replied.

King repeated the question.

Finally, haltingly, Don spilled the beans about his job, after which King turned to the camera with a grin and said: “I don’t own stock in Boeing or anything, but I assure you Don is not nervous about making aircraft. Not nervous! Just nervous about being on television.”

It’s this refusal to succumb to the trappings and affectations of anchoring, this determination to slice through pretension with a chain saw, that makes King the ideal choice as TBS’ main man here. After all his years on TV and, especially, radio, where he first made his reputation, there is still a rawness about King that is very engaging.

As on his CNN series “Larry King Live,” there’s nothing phony or pompous about him here. “I’m from Brooklyn,” he said at one point after correcting his own pronunciation of “decathlon.”

You see it on his face, you hear it in his voice: There is life after the Goodwill Games, and life during the games that’s unrelated to sports.

At one point that same evening, as pictures from a Seattle fish market flashed on the screen, King provided commentary: “Me and da wife, we walked through here the other day. You’ll love it.”

And remember, trust him on this. Mark it down. Bank on it. Don wasn’t nervous.