KEY POINTS:
The second of television's big four sports events is rolling. With the cricket gone, yachting is in its close-up. It showed us their Kiwi sailors beating our Kiwi sailors. While both crews did everything well, theirs did it all a fraction better, to win by 35 seconds.
TVNZ has had years of polishing its coverage, and it doesn't miss anything, getting us in tight to show something that could be as exciting as watching clothes rotate in a tumble dryer actually drips skill, strength and tactics.
Now America's Cup yachting is married to video game technology, a sport for aristocrats has become accessible to all.
We know who is ahead, down to tiny margins, even when they are a long way apart, and we can make reasonable guesses at what will happen, especially as the boats squeeze into the marks.
Those of us who don't know a start box from a lunch box and who think a dial-up is something fractionally slower than New Zealand broadband, are suddenly confident about tactics.
For instance those who think racing is about putting one's head down and going flat out discover bursts of going at right angles to the finish line can be a very clever thing.
Compare that with 1983, when the Australians beat the Americans. Watching on television told us almost nothing. There were helicopter shots, from a long way up, and that was that. Otherwise it was radio with the yachts as colour and movement.
Now that the cameras get us into the boats, there is room for a certain frisson. Sailors are famed for, well, salty language. While the first 2007 race didn't produce the raw expletive-riddled assessment given the 2003 boat, when its mast snapped we did have an involving sense of people under pressure
Yachting at this level comes with an inherent problem for television, which thrives on close-quarter action.
It is the same one afflicting Formula One motor racing. Whoever is in front after the first few corners becomes an almost sure bet to win. In America's Cup racing the quickest to the first mark is the prime bet. In Valencia this has been so 90 per cent of the time.
This gives TVNZ commentators the challenge of making something exciting out of a race that can become almost immediately predictable.
Peter Montgomery carries most of the commentating load.
His is the most widely recognised voice in television sports.
He has eased down from the uber-excited "liquid Himalayas" years although his joyously howled, "The America's Cup is now New Zealand's Cup" line is part of local sports lore.
Because he is the voice most heard, he carries the risk. If New Zealand is winning, all is well. He need only praise the boat, the team, the plan, the crew and it will play beautifully at home.
But soon after the start, Alinghi took over.
This made it a long and brutally hard day at the office trying to find something to be optimistic about, to keep the viewers' hopes up and those viewers in front of the sets.
Bit by bit, Alinghi extinguished suggestions that New Zealand's crew work would be the difference. Then it was the one about racing downwind and then upwind again.
Gradually Montgomery and his comments man, Luna Rossa's helmsman, were pushed back on the reefs of reminding us, "This is a long series, and there is still a long way to go."
As the boats crossed the line we got a final and realistic assessment, "The New Zealand team has some serious problems."
Hopefully they can solve them. If not, the All Blacks had a win in South Africa, and there's the Netball World Championships and the Rugby World Cup to come.
Television's sports year may have had problems finding something to celebrate, but like the yachting it still has a long way to go.
