The Evolution Of Olympic Coverage Essay Research

The Evolution Of Olympic Coverage Essay, Research Paper

The Evolution of Olympic Coverage

On February 18th, 1960, the 8th Olympic Winter Games opened in Squaw Valley, California, the first Olympics to be held in North America since 1932. In addition to some 1,000 athletes and several thousands spectators, the opening ceremonies were watched by several CBS television cameras, marking the beginning of television coverage of the Olympic Games on American Television.

The anchorman for these first televised Olympics was Walter Cronkite, and several CBS sports reporters did play-by-play of various events and a handful of CBS newsmen were dispatched to Squaw Valley to interview medal-winners and dignitaries.

Considering how extensive television coverage of the Olympics has become, and how much broadcast rights fees nowadays go for, it may surprise many that CBS paid just $50,000 for broadcast rights to Squaw Valley (and spent another $450,000 for production) and that the network broadcast just fifteen hours of coverage.

Despite the favorable time difference, not much of the coverage was live. For one thing, on most weeknights, CBS had just a half-hour in prime-time (sometimes an hour) and another 15 minutes at 11:15 P.M. (Eastern and Pacific times). Thus, most of what was seen were edited highlights, making use of the then newly developed art of videotape editing. CBS, however, did air live a handful of events, most notably some figure skating, and the final two games of the ice hockey tournament, the U.S. against the Soviet Union, and the U.S. against Czechoslovakia. The U.S. hockey team, who had lost the gold-medal game to the Russians four years earlier at Cortina, Italy, were not expected to medal at Squaw Valley. But after winning two games against weak opposition, Team U.S.A. stunned Canada, and then, on the second-to-last day of the Olympics, upset the Russians. The next morning, the final day of the Squaw Valley Games, the U.S. came back from a 4-3 deficit after two periods to score six straight goals in the final period to cement a 9-4 win and the gold medal, The United States first in ice hockey.

CBS also had the Summer Games from Rome. As there were no communications satellites yet, tape was shot, edited, and quickly flown across the Atlantic to what was then Idlewild Airport in New York where they would be put on a videotape deck in a mobile unit connected to the CBS network, allowing most events to be broadcast the same day they occurred.

In the spring of 1961 ABC began running a continuing show called Wide World of Sports. Because Wide World covered a lot of Olympic sports, both summer, and winter (often in 1961 and 1962, Olympic sports broadcast on Wide World were being seen on American television for the first time outside of the 1960 Squaw Valley and Rome telecasts), the network quickly became familiar with how to cover them, and as a result, ABC aggressively bid for the domestic television rights to the 1964 Winter (Innsbruck) and Summer (Tokyo) Games.

ABC won Innsbruck, but lost Tokyo to NBC. On January 29th, 1964, ABC began its first Olympics, the opening day of the Innsbruck games. Although there was a satellite by this time, it was not in a stationary orbit, so very little of ABC’s Innsbruck coverage would be sent by satellite. Instead, as CBS did in Rome four years earlier, tape was shot, edited, and flown across the Atlantic to New York. Still, with most Winter Olympic events occurring during the morning hours, nearly everything was broadcast the same day it occurred. Critics noted that ABC’s coverage in Innsbruck was vastly superior to what CBS had done just four years before.

By the time the 1964 Summer Olympics began, there was a stationary orbit satellite over the Pacific, allowing NBC to carry the opening ceremonies live and in color. However, very little of the remaining coverage was either live or in color, but the satellite made it possible for NBC to feed its average of 45 minutes a day to the U.S. as it was being shown in the Eastern Time Zone.

The first Olympics that had extensive color and satellite coverage were the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France, which ABC broadcast. Some daytime coverage was live, the rest was same day, nearly all of it was in color, and the critics again praised ABC. By this time, ABC was carrying 22 total hours of coverage over 11 days, an average of 90 minutes to two hours daily.

That October, ABC carried the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, and with 45 hours of coverage, and a favorable time difference, much of what was seen was broadcast live. In Mexico City, ABC got acclaim not just for covering events, but also for covering the “black power” protests which saw two U.S. track medalists, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raise their fists in protest on the victory stand during the National Anthem after receiving their medals.

NBC broke ABC’s stranglehold on the Olympics in 1972, winning the rights to broadcast that year’s Winter Games at Saporro, Japan. Despite a record 37 hours of coverage, much of it live, critics panned the coverage. Many wondered why Curt Gowdy – perhaps the best play-by-play sportscaster who ever lived – was NBC’s studio host and not doing play-by-play of one sport or another.

That August, ABC carried 66 hours of coverage of the Summer Olympics in Munich. While the on-field highlight was Ma