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.
– 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.
John
Guest
I remember the coverage of the 1980 Winter Olympics. Randy Gardner of the USA injured himself going onto the ice and he and his ice dancing partner Tai Babilonia could not compete. Some American commentator took up about half the description time talking about a pair that did not compete. Tai Babilonia later developed a drug problem. It was probably from embarrassment over the idiot commentator never shutting up about her and her partner in spite of them not going onto the ice.
Wayde Petersen
Guest
Every 2 years, and we constantly get the same whining about the Olympic coverage, other nations T.V networks like ours show events that their citizens compete in, build a bridge and get over yourselves, and like the setting of the sun, that will never change. And anyway, to get athletes from other nations to interview for Australian Television would be difficult because their respective nations would have the first rights to him/her, and that's not taking into account the time restraints. Let's face it, you are never going to satisfy everyone in covering an event as large as the Olympics, so basically the networks take the path of least resistance, and that is to concentrate on the Australian events mainly (because those are the ones that have the most interest), and then fill the rest with the best of the rest, because they are not solely appealing to the sports nuts like us, but to the casual observer, who mainly wants what they're offering. I payed the $50 for the Foxtel package, and I was happy with what I got, because they did deliver what they promised, and that was every medal event live and in full, and they showed our athletes as well, with limited interruption (which was the main reason why I paid for it in the first place). Basically showing every medal ceremony for the London Games would eat away a lot of time that would be put to better use in showing some actual sport. Foxtel did a good job and I would pay for their coverage of the London Games if the price was reasonable, because if the lack of interruption, and the chance to see an Olympic event in full.
Jason Cave
Guest
I remember that Moscow 1980 coverage on Seven. Among the Seven commentators who went over to Moscow were a young Sandy Roberts who covered diving, Bill Collins who did the athletics, Peter Landy, Garry Wilkinson and Ron Casey who headed up the coverage. And it was Roberts who took over the hosting role from Casey when he (Casey) stood down for a period due to stress. Bruce McAvaney did the Adelaide end of the coverage. Another thing I should point is why didn't Nine & Foxtel do a deal with either ABC or SBS prior to Nine/Foxtel winning the rights to Vancouver 2010/London 2012 so that either network can show the Foxtel pictures on FTA?
M-Rod
Guest
Can't disagree with what you say, but self-serving Free to Air Olympic TV coverage has and will be around forever....I can remember Moscow 1980 TV coverage being force-fed 2 hours of rhythm gymnastics since that was what the then Channel 7 market research indicated their middle-aged female demographic was likely to watch. FTA TV stations are still the gatekeepers. They secured massive amounts of DTB digital spectrum that could if they wanted to be used for multi-channel data-casting and deliver up to 5 simultaneous Olympic event feeds that a viewer could select from...but its nothing to do with FTA stations using the bandwidth effectively - just locking it up to prevent new media players into the market. I live for the day when someone like Apple stitches up the IOC broadcast rights with an internet subscription model where consumers select to view from the range of events being televised in real time, and bypass FTA stations choosing which feed they want to show.