First congratulations to John Shuster, Tyler George, Matt Hamilton, and John Landsteiner on winning men's curling gold in PyeongChang. They went on an epic and unlikely five game win streak to bring home the Olympic Championship. Second shame on NBC for missing a golden opportunity to use telestration.
Curling is a sport all about angles and ricochets. Players setup guards and leave stones placed so that they can block later shots during an end. To remove these stones the players try for doubles, where they use a single throw to bounce one stone off two of the opponents.
During the gold medal game broadcast the NBC announcers frequently used words to describe what the players on the ice were thinking about attempting. They described the hits and resulting movement of the stones that teams were planning to attempt. Never once during the broadcast did they use telestration to illustrate the concepts. This circumstance screamed for pictures to describe what those of us not intimately involved with the game of curling had trouble understanding or visualizing.
The cheesiness of telestration's use during Monday Night Football would not have been duplicated here. Instead a clear picture of what players were attempting to achieve could have been drawn right in front of us. They could have easily used arrows to show where the stones should hit and the intended result. The failure to do this was a big mis by the NBC production and broadcast team.
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