Is it true that the Olympics will not be broadcast live in the States?
Most Olympic events will be taped, and shown on TV in the USA hours later.
This is hardly a new development. Networks pay a LOT of money for the rights to broadcast the Olympics, and they want to show them in prime time, when the audiences are largest, and the advertising revenues are highest.
When the Olympics take place in a country far from the USA (like Australia, for instance!), an event may take place while most Americans are in bed or at work. Not good for the Nielsens! SO, networks regularly tape events and show them later, when the audience will be larger.
Of course, by the time an event is aired, many of us already KNOW who won, which completely eleiminates the suspense and excitement. It’s a real dilemma for the networks.
Four years ago in Atlanta, most events weren’t broadcast live either - though NBC sort of glossed over that fact in its coverage.
This was a big change from the '84 LA Olympics, when ABC had live coverage of pretty much everything. A major step backwards.
The US television networks attitude toward the Olympic Games is that they should be presented differently because the audience is different than most sporting events, i.e. there are a lot more women watching.
NBC, who has secured the rights to most Olympic broadcasts for the near future, believes that women aren’t really concerned with winners and losers, but would rather hear a compelling, heart-warming story.
In 1996, NBC went completely overboard on this and the network says that it will cut back on the feature stories.
Having the games in Los Angeles in 1984 was perfect for US television. Many events could be scheduled to take place in prime time (8-11 EDT). And with a limited field, everybody loved to watch the US pick up a lot of dubiously earned gold medals.
There is currently a 14 hour time differential (or ten hours, if you go the other way) between Sydney and the US East Coast. That means, an event held at noon in Sydney would be viewed at 10 pm the previous evening in New York. events held in prime time in Sydney (7pm to 10pm) would be seen at 5am to 8 am in New York (counting on fingers to make sure got it right).
They really don’t have any choice, you see? Just wait until 2002 and the World Cup Finals in Korea/Japan, when we see what American TV does about showing games that occur during the middle of the night!
Actually, Australian summer was from late December to March. The games were held in February; they’ve just been waiting to broadcast them. :D:D
ABC probably won’t care too much about the time difference in that case. I will because I care who wins the World Cup, but World Cup viewers in the states are a small bunch. I have a feeling that Univision will broadcast the matches live.
Wow - that’s great to hear. I couldnt beleive how bad it got last time, it seemed like you’d see ten minutes of sports followed by thiry minutes of some athlete’s sister who had leukemia. And way too many stories on Americans (BTW I am an American). Anway its great they are cutting back on the fluff.
IMHO nothing beats the Olympics coverage from the 70’s on ABC. The whole Wide World of Sports gang, that great theme music, the spinning globe that took you to the heartwarming stories (but not too many). My family used to camp out in the TV room when they were on.
The next best thing was the Winter Games from Nagano when TNT would broadcast in the morning things like entire hockey games for six hours. I was home at the time and it was great to watch fairly comprehensive coverage. Sigh. Not like the prime time crap.
Oh well.
I remember with the Seoul Olympics, they taped the popular events but showed some of the less popular events live in the middle of the night. Nothing like waking up at 3 am and seeing men’s gymnastics!
In college we watched EVERY televised olympic hockey game. TNT and NBC showed them live (sometimes even double headers) from about midnight until like 4-5 in the morning. For two weeks we were the 5 most sleep deprived guys on campus, but it was WELL worth it. I saw some of the best hockey I have ever seen. I wish that they showed more Women’s games, but I LOVED being able to watch wacky hockey games in the middle of the night. I do hope that future Olympics broadcasts do this as well, as some of the best hockey games happened when you have games like Czech Rep. vs. Russia at 2:00 AM EST.
My dream is that for 2 weeks, NBC says “forget about the regular schedule” and runs 24 hour Olympic coverage on all of their broadcast and cable networks. I’d take 14 straight sick days and never sleep if that was the case!
And the thing about the 1996 Olympics is that they
a) usually showed these heartwarming stories before the events
b) focused much more on the winners
So even if you managed to avoid any news of who won, the coverage itself usually ruined the suspense anyway.
I think we should all keep in mind that the Olympics are packaged to appeal to television viewers and not necessarily fans of the individual sports.
Those are often completely different sets of people. Most people aren’t going to get excited over who wins the women’s pole vault, but if NBC shows you enough feature stories about Stacy Dragila and advertises it enough, you might feel compelled to watch one of the Olympics’ more obscure events.
[quote}IMHO nothing beats the Olympics coverage from the 70’s on ABC. The whole Wide World of Sports gang, that great theme music, the spinning globe that took you to the heartwarming stories (but not too many). My family used to camp out in the TV room when they were on. [/quote]
Hear! Hear!
ABC’s coverage in the 70’s was THE BEST!!!
I don’t understand why they can’t just cram the Olympics into the US prime-time time slot (well, the games anyone cares about, anyway). The athletes can get up for us. 
Also that great intro to Wide World of Sports… “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport…”
The intro had special poignancy when the sport was the International Sado-Masochism Championship… “the agony of victory and the thrill of defeat!”