Olmpic shooting sports

[USARO4]

Is anyone else here surprised at the total lack of coverage of the many shooting events on the network coverage of the Olympics? I guess its to be expected in todays brain dead politically correct society. What little I've watched of the coverage seems to be mainly skinny bikini clad girls playing volleyball in a sand box. Maybe 20 years ago I would have found that stimulating, nowdays how about some smallbore target competition. My oldest son is a sports junkie and has Tivo'd the entire coverage. He tells not one shooting sport was televised.

[legend]

the only shooting i have seen was olympic trap;but thats typical coverage for the games.
i believe they show the more popular sports,and,with the current feelings in this country about guns or hunting most likely the sponsers put pressure on the tv stations to showcase thier commercials to the biggest crowd possible.

[JSnover]

You'll have to wait for the winter games, might see some biathalon coverage.

[jameslovesjammie]

I just think it's bad when China beats us in the shooting events. Kinda bothers me some way.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/shooting;_ylt=AmULH1v.hai0RTLJkKy3ZEGQaJh4

James

[.38 Special]

Playing devil's advocate, I can think of several legitimate reasons why shooting has not been broadcast. For one thing, it's not a great spectator sport. I mean, have you ever watched a Free Pistol competition, or ten meter air? It's a snoozer. It's also worth noting that NBC coverage has focused on a handful of sports to the near complete exclusion of a whole lot of others. How much Olympic sailing coverage have you seen? Canoeing? Handball? I personally would much rather see 15 or 20 minutes of a wide variety of sports rather than endless hours of beach volleyball prelims, but nobody at NBC listens to me.

Now of course it's very possible that NBC just doesn't want to show anything gun-related. I just don't think it's a foregone conclusion.

[big dale]

I suspect that it was a corperate NBC decision to exclude the shooting sports as they have no use for any gun sport or anything that would show guns in a good way.

Big Dale

[Hip's Ax]

I just think it's bad when China beats us in the shooting events. Kinda bothers me some way.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/shooting;_ylt=AmULH1v.hai0RTLJkKy3ZEGQaJh4

James

China didn't beat us.

Matt Emmons is the finest 3P shooter in the world. Now, twice, on the world stage, in front of God and everybody it took Matt Emmons to beat Matt Emmons.

Cross fires and earlier than expected trigger breaks happen to EVERY competitive shooter, Matt just had the misfortune to have these things happen to him twice on the final shot of two consecutive Olympics when he was so far out front no one could have caught him.

[Morgan Astorbilt]

Years ago, when the Adolph Coors Brewing Co. was sponsoring the annual Coors Schuetzenfest southeast regionals at the Asheville Rifle and Pistol Club, as a member of the Western Carolina Schuetzen Society, I volunteered to notify the three major network television stations in Charlotte, NC. about the event, which was quite colorful, besides the interesting turn of the century and modern target rifles, there were tents, banners, and other props supplied by Coors, along with handsome prizes. A general carnival atmosphere. I notified the stations via mail, suggesting that it would make an excellent "Human Interest" story.

WSOC (ABC Ch.9) never responded.

WBTV (CBS Ch.3) Responded by phone, stating that they didn't have a team that far West, but would try to cover it. They never showed up, and instead, broadcast the Annual Hollering Contest out in Spivey Corners, NC.(No kidding!) I suppose a bunch of yahoos seeing who could holler the farthest or scream the loudest, was more interesting than seeing a revival of nineteenth century 200 yd. target shooting.

WCNC (NBC Ch.36) Never called or wrote, so I called their news room, and after identifying myself, was connected to a producer, who told me that it isn't the policy of NBC, or their affiliates, to portray anything related to the use of firearms in a positive light, or appear to advocate their use by televising such events.
The best I can say, is at least NBC was honest about it.

These were their words, not mine, as best I can remember. So much for major news media impartiality.

I believe there's another member of the WCSS who posts here, by the name of Green Frog who may also recall the Coors Schuetzenfest days in Asheville. He may have been there when I relayed the news to the other members, I know I had a long conversation about it with Charlie Dell, may he rest in peace. He had councilled me not to even bother, and he was right.
Morgan

[Morgan Astorbilt]

Did a search, Green Frog doesn't post here, it must be on the Practical Machinist- Gunsmith site I saw him on. He got that nickname because he drives a green bug-eyed Austin Healy.
Morgan

[MtGun44]

John Lott's book, Bias Against Guns, researched why essentially all the
lamestream media never reports on citizens using firearms for successful
self defense. Most "well informed" people absolutely deny that successful
self defense with handguns ever occurs - I have personally heard people
say "then why have I never heard of a single case of someone using a gun
for defense??".

Lott spent quite a bit of time researching the coverage of public massacre type
of shootings which had been stopped or prevented from getting worse by
armed citizens. Basically out of perhaps 1000 newspaper articles about such
an incident, 3-4 would mention that the person that stopped it had a gun, perhaps
100-200 would mention that a private citizen stopped it, but not mention the
gun, most would just not say how it happened to stop.

Lott went to the trouble to look up and interview many of the "reporters" and
ask why they had not mentioned that the use of a gun helped save lives. They
all said much like Morgan says above - they didn't want to give anyone the idea
that firearms could be used for self defense. Basically, the news media are NOT
reporters, they MAKE UP and REWRITE the "news" to fit their notion of what
the public needs to be propagandized about.

I no longer read our lying local newspaper, the Kansas City Star (widely known
as the Red Star) or any of the old three networks. Fox is very irritating with
the British tabloid style eternal coverage of "true crime" stories ( pick some sensational
story, preferably with a young female victim and drag out the non-news for
about 30-60 days) but their overall news coverage is by far the most neutral.

I'm not surprised at what Morgan reported about the media refusing (as policy)
to cover firearms events, and I, too, was irritated by the lack of Olympic shooting
coverage.

I agree that detailed coverage of free pistol or three position rifle can be dull,
but showing a short report, explaining the sport, the difficulty and the time
spent in practice and getting to know the competitors would be just as interesting
as this type of reporting is when they apply it to other sports.

NBC is the worst anti-gun network and I NEVER watch them at other times.

Spend your money where you want, but consider not supporting people that
hate you and your pastimes.

Bill

[Dale53]

The "Green Frog" appears regularly on the ASSRA Forum (American Single Shot Rifle Ass'n) at:

http://www.assra.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl

Dale53

[Southern Son]

38Special, I beg to differ,l how in the hell can watching a bunch a sweaty gits running through the streets of Beijing be considered "more entertaining"? How about a bunch of steriod munching shaved apes repeatedly lifting heavy objects? An I don't care who you are, a 50 meter swim might be exciting, but 1500 meters of people swiming backwards and forewards, I swear to God, I CAN'T STAND ANOTHER MINUTE OF SWIMMING. Here in Oz we got about 3 minutes of trap (since the games started). On the otherhand we got no less than 4 hours YESTERDAY of handball. I know dozens of people who shoot trap, skeet and what have you, I HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF HANDBALL BEING PLAYED IN OZ LIKE THEY ARE PLAYING IN THE OLYPICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rant over, feeling much better, I might have a Bex and a little lay down now.

[Echo]

And then this evening it was wire-to-wire coverage of the marathon - 2+hours of watching folks run. Law & Order reruns we have seen a dozen times are more entertaining. On the other channel, it was Lithuania versus Argentina for the bronze in BBall. Really enthralling.

I think we all ought to write to our local NBC affiliates & complain. Of course it may not do any good, but if we do nothing, then nothing will change. Who knows?

[Ron]

Russell Marks, one of Australia's top shot gun shooters didn't fair very well at the Olympics. He was interviewed on the ABC National Radio and stated that his and about 16 other shooters who had the same cartridge supplier, arrived in China to discover that the Chinese claimed that their ammo had not arrived. As a result they had to use local Chinese made ammo. Surprise, Surprise when he and the others got to the line to compete, the chinese shooters were using the brand of ammo that went missing!!!!

He also stated that one of the chinese shooters, the bronze place getter, missed three clays, the field umpires signalled misses three times but the competition judge did not record them. Something to do with "home rules" Still Marks did say that the chinese shooter probably deserved to beat him as he was the better shooter on the day, no need for cheating. As far as TV coverage was concerned, it was a non event in Melbourne, so much so that the Combined Firearm Owners of Victoria contacted the local Channel 7 TV and complained about the lack of coverage; it got them nowhere.

[GSM]

Southern Son:

You folks got 2 minutes, 45 seconds more coverage than we did. I think there was a 15 second burst showing the US skeet shooting during the "highlights". Sort of crap coverage - I guess they have to show what sells, not necessarily what is interesting. Heaven forbid the popular media ever show a firearm used in a positive light.



38 Spec., FWIW, I could certainly sit and watch a 10m, free pistol, or, better yet, a rapid fire event. Especially a rapid fire event. I might be biased though, I like shooting the 10m and free pistol.

Only 2 years until the Winter Olympics - they did show a fair amount of the biathlon here in the states last time. To me, this was one of the best events they showed.

[.38 Special]

I'd probably watch the entirety of an Olympic shooting match myself. But you know, I once made a living racing bicycles so would have enjoyed seeing the entire 6+ hour bicycle road race. At the same time, I can understand how the average Joe would be bored out of his tree if forced to do the same thing.

And so it goes. The general public apparently got what they wanted. The rest of us can go hang.

[Morgan Astorbilt]

Watching the 10M and 50M pistol matches(And probably rifle also) probably aren't as boring as most here might think. When I used to shoot monthly at the Wolf Creek Olympic Shooting Facility near Atlanta, I was able to see what the audience saw during the '96 Olympics.

In the first place, these are electronic targets, and each shooter has a monitor next to them, on the shooting bench, They score the shots to within .01MM, record each shot, and can be switched from target with shots shown in order fired, to center of group, or to center of mass, to help adjust sights. On a table behind them, is a printer, which will print out all info, and a paper target, with the shots marked.

For the benefit of the audience, there are giant screen TV's which do the same, and over each shooter is a large score board, which registers each shot, so it's easy to follow who's leading, and watch the finals, which are scored to 1/10 of a point(ie: a shot in the middle of the 8 ring is an 8.5, and a shot almost touching the 9 ring will be an 8.9). This was twelve years ago, I'm sure it's even impressive now.

Morgan