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Thoughts on coverage of the 2012 Olympics
The Crowd
Roar Guru
27th February, 2010
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The Crowd
Roar Guru
27th February, 2010
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2367 Reads

With the Winter Olympics soon drawing to a close in Vancouver and critics having a field day criticising Nine/Foxtel’s coverage of the Games, thoughts will soon turn to the main event: the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

This is the main event that most Australians will be focusing on and watching.

But seeing that there will be critics ready to give Nine and Foxtel a tough time about their Olympic coverage in 2012, both networks will have to raise the standard much higher than what they have done so far on their Winter Olympics coverage.

Not only that, Nine and Foxtel would be well aware of the bad press Seven got for their Beijing Olympics coverage two years ago and will try to avoid that as much as possible

And their main area of concern will be the joint commentary team of the Nine Network and Foxtel.

They have to get the selection of their commentary teams of their respective networks spot on. Both Nine and Foxtel will probably ask their commentators to keep up to date about the rules and the competitors of the Olympic sports they are covering.

So, here are my thoughts on Nine/Foxtel’s coverage of 2012 Olympics:

– Have ALL or most events televised LIVE on free-to-air, not just some selected sports as in previous Olympics

– No morning program like what Seven did in 2008.

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– Show ALL medal ceremonies in full, not just those involving Australians.

– Interview athletes from other countries, not just Australians.

– Keep the bias in the commentary to a minimum.

A perfect example of how to do a sports coverage properly is the ABC’s excellent coverage of the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games. The executive producers of Olympic Games coverage could do a lot worse than dust off the Commonwealth Games videos at the ABC and see just how good the ABC was in doing those Games.

Nine and Foxtel have a lot of work to do, but they have two years to go until London.

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