TELEVISION : Live TripleCast Beats ‘Plausibly Live’ NBC

The Olympic TripleCast continues to impress viewers. Kevin and Jean McNamara of Tarzana are among those who have been won over.

“It’s great,� said Jean, who has been watching a lot of the gymnastics competition. “It’s the next best thing to being there.

“NBC just shows you the top competitors. On the TripleCast, you see all kinds of performers.�

The McNamaras have a complaint, though. They would like to see the commentators on camera, particularly because their daughter, Julianne, is working on the gymnastics events.

That’s not possible, because TripleCast does not have its own cameras on-site, which has turned out to be the one major flaw.

On-site interviews are with audio only. A boxing interview, for instance, has to be conducted while a fight is being shown.

There are other disadvantages, as well. NBC boxing announcers Bob Trumpy and Al Bernstein were able to show viewers the computer printouts that showed Eric Griffin ahead on all of the judges’ score cards Saturday. The TripleCast announcers--Bob Papa, Ferdie Pacheco and Wallace Matthews--were also on top of the story, and much earlier, but could only talk about the printouts.

Technically, NBC has the advantage. Its production is slicker. But in most areas, the TripleCast coverage beats NBC’s.

One could argue that with a $125 price tag, it should.

The key difference is, the TripleCast is pure. It’s live, unaltered coverage. And nothing is slanted.

You might get a Romanian gymnast performing live, then an American on tape. On NBC, it would be the other way around, if the Romanian is shown at all.

NBC has created an interesting situation. The network, in a way, is competing with itself, since it is a 50% partner in the pay-per-view TripleCast venture.

And how can one channel, saddled with commercials, fragmented coverage and tape-delays, compete with three channels that have no commercials and coverage that is live and continuous?

NBC also sort of painted itself into a corner with its philosophy of “plausibly live� coverage, meaning it pretends it is live when it isn’t. “Plausibly deceptive� is whatit is.

NBC might say something is coming up, but actually it already has happened.

It tends to get a little confusing. Even NBC gets confused. Friday night, it broke for a commercial, saying the women’s 50-meter freestyle was coming up. Actually, the event already had been shown.

NBC, as any network that has attempted the impossible chore of covering an Olympics, has been hit hard with criticism.

But there also have been plenty of positives. The athlete profiles and “Where Are They Now� retrospectives, although sometimes intrusive, generally have been excellent.

As for the announcing, Southern Californians Chris Marlowe and Paul Sunderland, in particular, have emerged as stars. Their work on volleyball has been equal to the matches NBC has been showing on its late-night shows, and the matches have been tremendous.

Marlowe and Sunderland, who work for Prime Ticket, are also best friends.