Besides that really was "sport" Karate. A sport tournament is a sport tournament. It depends on your school of thought but there is a general distinction between that and 'budo' karate organizations. You don't see most of those highly traditional guys intersted in tournaments but if you were to see a competition you it wouldn't be based on point systems but rather one finishing blow. Basically every strike or defense is potentially your last chance. Now that wouldn't make for much of a fight to watch but that's why it's not for sport so much. I suspect the host would have fared much worse in that.
I figure a lot of what you see in modern karate is an offshoot of it being changed to be made safer to put in schools as part of PE and such for children and the general public. Hell old school karate had eye pokes and groin strikes, throws, grappling, choke holds, you name it
I finally watched the Karate one. I was actually a little dissapointed. Some of the training they were showing was kinda harcore and oldschool like the weakpoint stuff but most of the stuff was no different then stuff you could find right here in America. The real traditional stuff was treated as "a secret". It was mostly the same watered down stuff that I was talking about above. I thought they were going to delve into some lesser known "traditional stuff" but this is just the same old same old really. Just watching the "block" segment had me laughing. It's the same old block and counter stuff you get taught in black belt mills that would never actually work even in a tourney and certainly wouldn't be found in a 'traditional' martial art. It's fighting by numbers that was simply developed because that kind of step one, step two way of teaching is safer. I'm hoping the other shows are better cuz that bored my pants off. Just imo, no offense if you liked it.