2004 Olympic TV spot promos

[duel mom]

In my media market, northern CA, yesterday morning I saw 2 Summer Olympic promos. I forgot which network. They showed 4 sports activities and fencing was one of them! Anyone else see it?

[WoodsideDr]

Do you recall what network or what show? I might have it TIVO'd.

[oiuyt]

Given that the Olympics will be on NBC and not the other networks they'd be the obvious bet... :)

-B :)

[WoodsideDr]

Yeah, yeah, but I wasn't intentionally being stupid. It is not unheard of for NBC programming (especially Olympic coverage) to be advertised on the other GE-owned cable stations.

[SJB]

Ah NBC and the Olympics.

Nationalistic Biased Coverage.

[oiuyt]

Originally posted by WoodsideDr
Yeah, yeah, but I wasn't intentionally being stupid. It is not unheard of for NBC programming (especially Olympic coverage) to be advertised on the other GE-owned cable stations.

Good call, it could have been Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, etc. My bad.

-B :)

[Capt. Slo-mo]

Originally posted by SJB
Ah NBC and the Olympics.
Nationalistic Biased Coverage.

Yes, well, we'd all like to think that in a perfect world, NBC would devote just as much time to Latvian steeplechasers or epee fencers from Fiji, but the market realities don't even come close to allowing it.

NBC ponies up hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast the Games. They sell the commercial spots based on projected viewership. The PV numbers are derived from the sporting events that market analysis shows to have the highest probability of attracting the most eyeballs to the sets. That's why you see "Dream Team" coverage until you want to pull up a wastebasket and puke.

If the ratings numbers don't match the predictions, then the network can be obligated to cough up a rebate to the advertisers. Since the profit margins can be really thin if the Olympics aren't in a US-friendly time zone, the spineless network executives go for the safe events easily promotable to the US viewership.

Right or wrong, that's the way it works. If the CBC coughs up enough money to wrest the Olympics away from a US network, they're free to selflessly cover all the nations of the world and their athletes.

I'll bet, however, you'd see just a much of a Canadian athlete bias from the CBC.

[darius]

I'll bet, however, you'd see just a much of a Canadian athlete bias from the CBC.

You will, but the CBC did a few things that made their coverage more attractive. First, they aired events live, despite the time difference....I was in a hotel in Montreal before the Terre des Hommes, watching Marion Jones set her records, before the entire US got to see it the next day.

They also cut those human-interest stories which take up about 65.2% of NBC's coverage. As a result, we didn't have to suffer through Clara X. Jones' struggle as a asthmatic, polio-stricken child whose race-walking dreams were set aback by her alcoholic father's terminal toe cancer. That left a lot more room to show ... *gasp* ... sports.

darius

[Peach]

Originally posted by darius
They also cut those human-interest stories which take up about 65.2% of NBC's coverage.

What really annoys me is that they do this because they think it gets them more of the female audience (I've read this in interviews of NBC types). As a woman, I do not give a rat's patoot how many family members of a pole-vaulter have contracted Lyme Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Elbows. I want to watch sports. If I want background, I'll go look it up on the Internet.

[edew]

I think the 65% is a bit misleading. The actual distribution of time allotted to various things shown on NBC's coverage goes as follows:

40% - commentators and anchors talking about how they're having fun in Seoul/Sydney/Utah/Atlanta/Athens/wherever
45% - human interest emoti-babble about bulimic childhood preventing Daisy Mae from really excelling in weightlifting, thus having to settle to being the best in gymnastics....
10% - commercials
3% - recaps of what happened with US competitors last weekend (showing them mouthing the national anthem or crying from losing)
1.5% - slo-mo replays of interesting actions
.5% - live sporting coverage.

If only those planes hit the NBC building in New York instead.

[hscoach]

All but your last comment was very good. Nothing is funny about 9/11. By the way, the NBC building was hit with anthrax.

[WoodsideDr]

Not to pile on, but I have to agree with hscoach. That final remark, edew, made me cringe. Probably only meant as a flippant comment, but still...

Back to the point of the thread however--did anyone see the ad?

[Event Horizon]

Originally posted by SJB
Ah NBC and the Olympics.

Nationalistic Biased Coverage.

Also, they tend to cut out and/or not mention the other countries that are also competing in the televised event. That's very annoying to me. I understand having the focus on the USA athletes but at least let us know who they competed against.

[SJB]

Also, they tend to cut out and/or not mention the other countries that are also competing in the televised event. That's very annoying to me. I understand having the focus on the USA athletes but at least let us know who they competed against.

This is the part that gets me the most. I can't count the number of times I've seen NBC coverage fade out or cut to commericial when an American athlete begins to lose an event.

As for CBC having a Canadian bias. They are there to cover our athletes but they also show footage of athletes from other countries winning events, even when Canadian competitors finished in the bottom half.

The big difference, to me, between NBC and CBC is that CBC seems to keep the spirit of the olympics in mind when broadcasting. As in, there are other countries there other than our own and if they medal then they worked hard to accomplish it and deserve it.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Originally posted by edew
I think the 65% is a bit misleading. The actual distribution of time allotted to various things shown on NBC's coverage goes as follows:

40% - commentators and anchors talking about how they're having fun in Seoul/Sydney/Utah/Atlanta/Athens/wherever
45% - human interest emoti-babble about bulimic childhood preventing Daisy Mae from really excelling in weightlifting, thus having to settle to being the best in gymnastics....
10% - commercials
3% - recaps of what happened with US competitors last weekend (showing them mouthing the national anthem or crying from losing)
1.5% - slo-mo replays of interesting actions
.5% - live sporting coverage.

By Comparison, my estimate of Swedish state TV coverage goes like this:

10% - Commentators and anchors talking in a studio about the sport we are going to see, often with detailed/arcane details, so that specialists get their due. If it some less known sport, the are often supported by some former Sw. Champion who helps them with specialist knowledge.
2% - human interest babble, equal amount to Sw. and foreign competitors
0% - commercials
10% - recaps of what was showed yesterday, showing finals or good Swedes, shown when they are doing actual sports
78% - real sporting coverage

The 78% breaks down like this:
39% - coverage of pre-final events, all sports, with or without Swedes
20% - coverage of final events, all sports, with or without Swedes
balance - followup on Swedes who did not make it as far as expected.

(a special quirk of Swedish coverage is that our competitors are played up a lot before the games, and those who fail that level get at least as much coverage on the "what went wrong" angle as those who did better than expected. go figure.)

Does this seem better than NBC? Well, you have some options:
1. Hop on a plane, and spend 3 weeks in a hotelroom
2. Petition NBC
3. Petition the congress, to make TV ads illegal.
4. Tune in to the TV channel "SvTV Världen" a long-wave channel which Sw. TV airs for Swedes all around the world. Can be seen in the USA (with right equipment) and will air an hour or two of coverage every day.
5. Eat your heart out!

In Sydney, the coverage was considerably better than outline above. Sw. TV stated 4 (or 6? I forget) digital channels which aired nothing than commented live coverage (no studio stuff, not up-and-personal, no nothing) of every sport conceivable, including such arcane stuff as basketball, baseball, gymnastics, strange shooting events, you name it, including the preliminaries in which no Swedes competed. Nearly round-the-clock coverage of everything! Those channels carried 12 hours IIRC of fencing.

Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson