The Championship of College Football - or - How I Learned to Love Bowl Games and Not Care About a Playoff

January 7, 2009 5:43 PM | No Comments
THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL.doc

NBC's Olympic Coverage So Far

August 12, 2008 6:22 PM | No Comments

As a former competitor of NBC -- particularly when it came to coverage of the Olympic Games -- even I must say that so far they have done everything right philosophically.  That is not to say that I don't have some issues with some of the specifics of their coverage (more on that later) but their broadcast plan has been very solid.  Their Nielsen ratings (17.0 through Sunday night's broadcast) are a reflection of their approach to date. 

The big difference in the NBC approach is the inclusion of live programming in their prime time presentation.  When an Olympics takes place in Europe there are no live events available in prime time.  For example, the time difference between the east coast of the U.S. and Athens (site of the 2004 Olympics) is 6 hours.  When NBC comes on the air at 8pm eastern time, it's 2am in Athens and obviously no athletic competition is taking place.  However, during the 2000 Games in Sydney or the 2008 Games in Beijing events that take place in the morning can be broadcast live in prime time.  The time difference in Sydney is 14 hours and in Beijing is 12 hours.  In other words, an event taking place at 10am in Beijing on Wed. can be broadcast live in prime time at 10pm on Tuesday night.  In Sydney an event taking place at 10am on Wednesday could have been broadcast at 8pm on Tuesday night.  Confusing to be sure but suffice it to say that in 2000 NBC decided not to do any live event coverage in prime time.  They elected to carry all events on tape in prime time -- sometimes holding events as much as 24 hours before they aired in the U.S. 

This year NBC has decided to give us a break and present events live when possible.  Thus we have had the pleasure of witnessing Michael Phelps' assault on the all-time gold medal haul including Sunday night's spectacular relay race (Sunday night here in the States; Monday morning in China).

I have some issues with some of the taped presentations I've seen.  Last night the coverage of synchronized diving was so badly edited that it was virtually impossible to follow.  Now one might say "why would someone even try to follow synchronized diving" and if one did say that one would be correct.  Nevertheless, if you put it on the air, it should make sense and last night's coverage didn't. 

But having said that, NBC has hit on the right formula - packaged event coverage intermixed with live event coverage makes for a very watchable broadcast -- synchro diving notwithstanding.  They will have their work cut out for them next week if they want to keep their ratings up.  Swimming ends and so the big star of the Games goes away.  Gymnastics ends and it is traditionally the biggest audience draw of the Summer Games.  They will have to make do with track and field and some diving with no real American stars on the scene.  But perhaps the momentum gained thus far will carry them through week 2.

We'll see.

BROADCASTING THE OLYMPIC GAMES

August 8, 2008 9:47 AM | No Comments
It's been 10 years now since I last had the honor of participating in the broadcast of the Olympic Games. My last Olympic broadcast was the Winter Games from Nagano, Japan in Feb. of 1998. 10 years in the world of broadcasting is several lifetimes in terms of technological advancements. At the time, we at CBS Sports built the first ever all digital broadcast center -- a state of the art 55.000 square foot broadcast facility that had a shelf life of approximately one month. The day after the closing ceremony in Nagano the technicians who had spent months building it began to tear it down. That's what life is like in the Olympic broadcast business.

My role for those games was executive producer and as such i was in charge of an army of some 1600 including on-air talent, producers, directors, technical personnel, translators, drivers, researchers, publicists and anyone else necessary to broadcast approximately 165 hours of television over a period of 17 days. I had been intimately involved in the preparation of the CBS broadcast schedule as well as the on-air presentation of the broadcasts - from graphics to feature stories to assignment of production personnel at each of the venues including the studio operation.

But enough about me. What NBC is about to undertake in Beijing makes what we at CBS did in Nagano look, well, much like what a U2 concert makes a garage band look like. Small, very, very small. Not to demean what we accomplished but NBC is about to broadcast and webcast over 3,000 hours of coverage over a multitude of platforms. What they'll do on the NBC network is comparable to our efforts but what they're attempting to do over several other broadcast nets (CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, USA and others) not to mention the thousands of hours of webcasting is unprecedented.

But here's the deal. It still comes down to the same old thing (and Dick Ebersol, NBC's maestro for these games knows this all too well) -- it's all about the stories you tell, and the stories you don't tell. Legendary television pioneers Roone Arledge and Jim McKay invented the way American broadcasters present the Olympics. Yes you cover the sports but you also cover the athletes -- up close and personal. And not just the American athletes. Some of the greatest Olympic stories ever told on American TV were "foreign" athletes. Broadcasting (or webcasting or any other kind of casting) the Olympic Games is about finding the best stories coming into the games and keeping an eye out for the best stories that take place during the games. If you come into the Games with a rigid plan you will undoubtedly miss out on some of the most dramatic events.

An anecdote: During the Summer Games of 1992 in Barcelona, myself and several of my CBS colleagues were attending as observers. We had broadcast the Winter Games from Albertville, France earlier that year and had great success in what was our maiden voyage in Olympic waters. Now we were on hand to see how our colleagues and competitors at NBC were doing. In planning the day's activities we noticed that a heavily favored Russian wrestler was competing against a Hungarian that afternoon. We knew that Hungarians liked nothing more than beating Russians in any competition, having just escaped Soviet rule only a few years earlier. We thought it would be interesting to go over to the wrestling venue to take in the action. Well, needless to say, the Hungarian pulled off the upset and the handful of Hungarian nationals on hand went wild. They hoisted the victor on their collective shoulders and paraded him around the arena, tears flowing freely. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was one of the most dramatic scenes I have ever witnessed. NBC's cameras were nowhere in site. They didn't cover the event. No American wrestler was involved and it simply didn't warrant coverage. It didn't fit into the plan. Big mistake.

So here's my unsolicited advice for my friends at NBC. In the course of your 3,000+ hours of Olympic coverage, find time for this year's version of my Hungarian wrestler. Hunt down the great stories that make the Olympic Games what they are -- the world's greatest sports spectacle. Tell the stories that break out during the Games, not just the stories you anticipated going in. It won't be all about Michael Phelps and his pursuit of 8 gold medals. There'll be a story about an athlete who has no chance of winning any medals that will be just as compelling. There are some 11,000 athletes competing in Beijing, most of whom have no chance of getting on the podium. Each one has a story. You can't tell 'em all but please tell the best ones, not just the American ones. Have a great Olympics, NBC. Dazzle us with your technology, your graphics, your animations, your camera and microphone placements, your insights and commentary. But most of all, dazzle us with your sense of drama and remember to show us what makes the Olympic Games so special.
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