There’s Not Much Delay in Complaints About NBC

Fortunately I didn’t get around to reading the Sunday sports section until late in the evening, otherwise I would have already known the results of the women’s gymnastics championship I had just watched on NBC. I had supposed that this was a delayed broadcast, but I did not suppose that it was delayed more than 24 hours!

I then did some more reading in previous editions of The Times and found out that the competition I had watched on Saturday had actually taken place on Thursday! I feel this constitutes a type of fraud on the part of NBC. I also notice that NBC chose not to cover the men’s competition at all. I am afraid that this is a presage of what is going to happen when the Olympics get underway in September. One can only wish that ABC, which does a better job on these things, had gotten the rights to the Olympics coverage.

THEODORE HENDERSON

Los Angeles

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Robert Earle’s letter appearing July 29 was right on the money, but there’s more to say. What NBC does is show-biznify and hype as celebrities the usual handful of stars to the virtual exclusion of everybody else, because they are convinced that’s what the demographic wants. (The discus? Give me a break!) Pump up the bad music track behind the stars’ human-interest sidebars; focus on the rivalries and replay the trash talk; if there are no real rivalries, invent them. If this were only true of sports! But there is the nightly network news and we’re in the middle of a presidential campaign. I can’t wait until Sydney.

JAMES LEIGH

Claremont