It must still be recognized that France Télé excels in one area: self-congratulation. No, because overall their consultants were not all bad, and the merry band of commentators were not always catastrophic (the hockey players, the bobsled, the alpine skiing or even Nelson when he talks about art are listenable). But their self-indulgence, their schoolboy humor and their fun puns is just mind-blowing.
Examples:
– we see the end of JLC’s race again, with of course Montel’s comments. On the last meters of the sprint the screen is cut in two with Montel’s face in close-up and the end of the race in very small. In fact we don’t care about Lamy-Chpuis, it’s so much more interesting to see Montel react to his own comments.
-the good dozen reports “to furnish” on the commentators, consultants or hosts of France 2. And we have fun seeing Luc Alphand playing hockey, and Pierre Bellemarre commenting on curling, and Candeloro saying something stupid. Live? yeah yeah, after. Don’t you see that we’re having fun here?
– Nelson on speed skating. I pity those who are really interested in speed skating, because it must be an ordeal. The Olympics as a pretext for a sports journalist to put on a show. Amusing for five minutes perhaps, indecent after that.
– a funny exchange on Stage 2 earlier with Raydo:
LioCha: Great, eh, these games, and what’s more when we have commentators of this level to share the event, eh, Raydo, eh, it’s fantastic isn’t it???
Raydo: Don’t make me be harsh.
LioCha: Um, yes no but still, our commentators are great, huh??
Raydo: yes, well I mute the sound when I watch.
– Laurent Luyat (and yet I like him) great coordinator of cheap emotion who spends his time congratulating or teasing his friends behind the microphone, as a worthy heir of Gérard Holtz (I remember Holtz’s calamitous broadcast on football during the 98 cdm, where he devoted half of the broadcast to congratulating the extraordinarily clever contributions of his speakers).
-Bilalian who cries on the air to praise the fantastic work of the whole team.
-and many, many other examples.
In fact, we imagine that their pretext for exposing their navels in this way is that they must tell themselves that no one cares about the winter games and that no one catches anything in 90% of the events.
– “So it’s okay guys, we’ll be able to let loose and show what a group of happy friends we are”
-“no, but are you sure we have enough reports with Jean-René’s best slips of the tongue to fill between the advertising pages?
– you’re right. We’re going to send Nathalie Simon to the rednecks and we’ll take close-ups of the tears of the guy’s girl who just got caught while surfing. Fred, warm up the camera.
The worst part is that we’re going to have to put up with them for quite a while longer, because I have the impression that the cupboards in the France Télé sports department are already full.
Worth a look
