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In the moment of truth of Avishag Samberg, the sports channel kicked us in the head again

The broadcast of the dramatic medal fight of the taekwondo fighter, as well as the Olympic studio that accompanied the first Games Day broadcasts in Tokyo, brought up the range of ills and flaws that have characterized the sports channel in recent years.

In focus, it seems: many of its stars just do not enjoy the product they broadcast

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• the sports channel

• 2021 Olympics

• Tokyo 2020

• TV review

Ilan Kaprov

Sunday, 25 July 2021, 08:33 Updated: 08:44

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Wisdom and bites do not add color or interest, they are done for only one reason: to burst the magic bubble.

The illusion that is an event that lifts us beyond the here and now, beyond what seems possible or impossible, is what makes sports so exciting.

It's amazing that a broadcaster covering it refuses to understand it

Each and every one of the athletes who qualify for the Olympics are always tested against past achievements.

This is a cruel measure, given that it is about 11,000 super-athletes, the spearhead of humanity without the slightest hint of exaggeration.

Still, every achievement is examined against the expectations, the ranking, the position in the last World Championship and the European Championship, the result they achieved in the past year, the personal record, the previous encounters with such and other opponents, etc.

This jargon seems so natural that one can almost forget how unusual it is.

To what extent this standard of best or nothing, is irrelevant in other areas of our lives.

Just two weeks ago we closed the Euro 2020 tournament, which in addition to its professional and entertainment quality, also placed on our screen a record of broadcast experience - a studio that was both a masterpiece of professionalism and knowledge, as well as a fun life of entertainment and color (due diligence: Charlton and Walla channels They are part of the same communication group). By the standards we apply to athletes - the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was supposed to be a new high point. But the first day of broadcasts of the games, and in no small part historical in terms of Israel - highlighted a problem that has been happening before our eyes for several years.

Throughout the Euros, many allegations have been made by spectators about the great difficulties the sports channel has mediated through the games.

Things reached a climax when gates were shown on the channel's broadcasts with the help of illustrations or still images, due to the lack of broadcasting rights.

And here, when it was finally the channel's turn to shine alone on the map with the world's biggest sporting event, all the weaknesses that had accumulated in it over the past few years came and went.

The first and most prominent of them - one that is difficult to emphasize enough for those for whom sports are love all year round, and not just at peak events - is the feeling that a significant number of the channel's talents simply do not like sports.

At the very least, they have a very strange way of showing love.

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Looks miserable during the broadcast.

Modi Bar-On (Photo: Screenshot, Walla)

Take, for example, the broadcast of Avishag Samberg's dramatic medal fight. On the face of it, this is the essence for which the Olympics are held. Taekwondo, a branch foreign to many viewers, suddenly gets a spotlight with the help of a local delegation. A chance to get to know him, maybe even fall in love with him. But the sports channel, which has unfortunately inherited the “open studio” culture in recent years at every event, came to it with Ron Kaufman as the panel moderator. And so, although the broadcast was led by the knowledgeable and professional Oded Halperin, we had to go through it with Pnini Kaufman as "another kick to the head and we're set"; "Static Avishag"; "You're 19, she's 30. Can't you kick her?" All this when that 19-year-old reaches the pinnacle of her life in an industry that Kaufman does not really know.

It is amazing to understand how these athletes, the vast majority of whom do not receive a thousandth of the coverage of a random footballer in the Premier League, are required not only to rise in one focused climax to which they have prepared for many years, but the sacrifices required to make their way. In an interview with Haaretz, Samberg said that the need to lose weight in order to enter the competition category of up to 49 kg, led her to a situation where "I do not have the strength to utter words, to speak, to do simple actions. Even the things I love and clear my head, like going to the mall or something - I have no strength. I have no strength to get up. There is no food in the body. That's the hardest thing, for me at least, in sports. "And here, even when it finally gets the attention of hundreds of thousands of Israeli spectators, it is accompanied by a strip of superficiality and contempt.

This "stand" culture is exactly why Kaufman - formerly the channel's star - has been censored in most of his broadcasts in recent years. The essence of the approach is a self-conscious disregard for everything and everyone, which prepares the ground for collective mowing. But Kaufman is not the only one, in recent years the channel has been filled with people of this very type - those who come to make a neighborhood, mow and remind us all how many Jews and sports do not go together. Football spectators suffer from this phenomenon with superficial figures like Raz Zehavi, Bonnie Ginzburg or Omri Afek (who stated in a column just a week ago that the failure of one team indicates the misery of all Israeli football), but it manages to catch even elephants like Modi Bar-On. One of the intelligent and witty presenters (and writers) who came on our screen, just seemed miserable during the morning broadcast of the studio on the first day of broadcast. Whether it's board jokes or weird questions, Bar-On just did not find himself in a transmitter that requires a multidisciplinary understanding of a wide variety of professions, rules and numbers. Bar-On is not necessarily guilty,But whoever placed him in this situation.

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Exactly why he has been censored from the sports channel in recent years.

Ron Kaufman (Photo: Reuven Castro)

This approach expresses a distorted worldview of a broadcaster, which in the past brought to Israel the professionalism in sports broadcasting.

After years of losing broadcasting rights and budgets, the sports channel has become a place where a presenter (again Kaufman) is caught eating while broadcasting, and a reporter who catches an Olympic athlete (initial singing) moments after a heartbreaking loss for a bronze medal - wonders if the tears on her face are proud or disappointment.

This broadcast experience not only insults the basic intelligence of anyone who loves sports, it also demeans those who came to it for the one-time experience of the Olympics.

There is no shortage of professional, knowledgeable and eloquent sportsmen in Israel, but there is a channel that for some reason chooses time and time again to distance itself from them, and treat every transmitter like a game in the national league.

And with the preoccupation constantly focused on the bland, it's no wonder that in the plethora of coverage editions yesterday (Saturday), we had to hear at least five times Arbel Eshet Makonen who was the only Israeli in the taekwondo hall until Samberg's final battle. One of the great achievements of the Euro Studio was the ability of its stars (led by Sharon Davidovich) not to make themselves the center of the event. They well understood their role as mediators, as those who are there to enrich our experience and not to take over. Kaufman's wisdom and Eshet's bites do not add color or interest, they are done for only one reason, disguised as it may be: to burst the magic bubble. The illusion that is an event that lifts us beyond the here and now, beyond what seems possible or impossible, is what makes sports so exciting. It's amazing that a broadcaster covering it refuses to understand it.

Not everything is black on the sports channel, and that too needs to be said.

The passion for sports and the knowledge of Maya Ronen and Miri Nevo, the blessed return of Ofer Shelach, excellent professionals such as Shai HaOzman, Yaron Talpaz and Oded Halperin - all these are proof that it is possible otherwise.

The thing is, this light only intensifies the bleak reality: the sports channel consciously chooses to harm our experience, out of a misconception that neighborhood, microphone provocations and lack of knowledge make viewers "feel at home."

This approach has kept many sports fans away from the channel over the years, and if it continues it will do the same for those who came here for a moment just to experience the Olympics.

After all, if a battle for an Olympic medal seems like a game of Bnei Lod, one can also settle for an online summary.

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Deserved a better broadcast than that.

Avishag Samberg (Photo: screenshot, Olympic Committee)

In small

As the owners of the rights to the Olympic broadcasts, it is the right of the people of the sports channel to do with the property they have purchased at will.

But the Olympics are no longer a basketball Premier League game that can be pushed to a paid channel to promote sales.

The fact that ordinary Israelis will not be able to watch US basketball team games, swimming pool finals or any other attractive competition, just because someone on the channel randomly decided what they would get for their regular monthly subscription, and for what they would be required to pay tens of shekels more - is legal, but Devoid of any love for spectators and sports.

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