Past Olympics Media Coverage

[Durban Sandshark]

South Africa's SABC underwent its second Summer Olympics TV coverage ever and its first in the multiracial and truly democratic era with Nelson Mandela as President for Atlanta 1996 following its Olympic re-entry. Bear in mind that Olympic broadcasting with South Africa, especially, was still a very new thing then and in the formative stages with TV services there firmly established over two decades at that point--Africa as a whole wasn't going to get proper Winter Olympic TV coverage until two years later with Nagano. SABC sent about 90 people to Atlanta to do television and radio coverage. Actually, 87 people--48 from SABC Topsport, 15 Airtime staff, 11 from SABC Television News and 12 from SABC Radio. The SABC Radio crew comprises two co-ordinators, two news staffers, one technician and nine commentators who among them handle all 11 official languages. In addition to the team of 87 were the commentators for Radio Metro and 5fm who received commercial sponsorship. Budget for the staff was undisclosed. It was also under contract to assemble a daily hourlong Afro-centric highlights show that the International Olympic Committee broadcasts to the rest of Africa for free. 

SABC, which operated then three channels nationwide, is broadcasting 196 hours of Olympic coverage, about 25 hours more than NBC is serving up for Americans. There is a six-hour time difference with Atlanta, so SABC began its broadcasts at around 9 pm South Africa time and goes until dawn, favoring insomniacs in SA. Not to mention showing the same ads over and over. About 40 percent of the broadcasts are live--all under its three channels and broadcasted the Olympics in four (at the time): English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa that expanded since up to 11, which started a South African Olympic broadcasting tradition. SABC tries to match announcers to events that might be of interest to a particular culture. Frequently SABC assigns two analysts to discuss an event: one speaking in Afrikaans and the other responding in English. It's like listening to half a telephone conversation in what could be troublesome for monolinguists. Announcer Peter van den Berg delivered an impassioned description of the women's beach volleyball final the other day, all in Afrikaans, at the time. Oftentimes, in the thoughts of Andrew Maykuth living down there then, the SABC Atlanta 1996 commentary team was found to be quite charming in its amatuerism that would otherwise land a counterpart in hot water in a another nation. SABC would allow its coverage to be more raw and not under the packaged presentation with lots of the "schmaltz" that NBC is notorious for. Before NBC went much more comprehensive and utilized more Olympic sports through its cable TV channels MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, the late NBCSN, and Bravo on the English side, SABC took the time to telecast Olympics sports ample coverage that were more obscure on American TV like team handball and field hockey. Coverage would, naturally, focus on the 1996 South African Olympic Team but with a small staff, it would show sports not involving South Africans with a more international feel than what NBC and ABC would offer at this point.  It even employed Australia's Seven Network for some of its commentary like for swimming when Heyns won gold or whenever a South African was competing, field hockey, and boxing, when its own sportscasters weren't qualified. 

http://www.maykuth.com/Projects/email730.htm

But harsh criticism abounded from South Africa sports media pundits and journalists, and there was an ignorance in some of the sports the SABC's commentators was covering some found "shocking", "ill-informed", and "ill-prepared and inaccurate on the sports they don't understand". Apparently, presenters and sportscasters and analysts were selected "for their ability to do on-camera presentations, their competence at voice-overs on edited inserts, their aptitude for research, and their ability to do their own make-up for on-camera presentations." Even when they're commentating on one Olympic sport, there's actually footage of another sport showing Plus (not a criticism), "sometimes SABC just lets the cameras roll and follow athletes around, an approach that puts viewers more in the position of spectators in Atlanta. After the swimming finals, for instance, a camera crew trailed some of the winners as they took a three-minute walk around the pool, absorbing the accolades from the audience" with "no commentary from SABC, just the giddy giggling of young athletes at the greatest moment of their lives" in "trying to capture the atmosphere other broadcasters tend to ignore," said the SABC Topsport liaison Christo Anderson. Other moments include Adding that "lack of commentary in most cases was a 'hiccup' caused by a technical glitch or the unintentional absence of a commentator".

SABC glossed over the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park bombing tragedy during its coverage, as if it didn't want to distract from the success of the likes of Penny Heyns. Maybe it was a reactionary numbness from its own political bombings within its borders for many years during apartheid. And this was 12 hours after the blast. 

https://mg.co.za/article/1996-07-26-no-gold-medal-for-the-sabc/

[Durban Sandshark]

Our newest installment of the gradually growing CTV Barcelona 1992 coverage collection. CTV invites Canadians to "win with the world" (its main slogan back then 30 years ago) in this promo announcing its (almost entirely live) coverage as the narrator speaks of what admirable athletic qualities Olympic athletes positively offer to the world in competition that brings "world spirit". In this "World Spirit" CTV Barcelona '92 promo, we see Seoul 1988 footage of Portuguese women's marathoner Rosa Mota, Romanian gymnast Daniela Silivas, Soviet rhythmic gymnast Marina Lobach, American heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Soviet gymnast Elena Shevchenko--all female Seoul 1988 gold medalists shown here--in keeping with the pro-internationalist theme. No male Olympians or even Canadians granted profiles, interestingly:

CTV wraps ups its Barcelona 1992 coverage with its final 7-hour Olympic segment prior to the Closing Ceremony on August 9 that went from 10am-4pm Canada/USA/Mexico CT with a Canadian focus on that day with high hopes of seeing Toronto's national boxing champion Mark Leduc strike gold to carry the golden streak set by Lennox Lewis in Seoul four years ago but would eventually get silver in light welterweight against Hector Vinette, marathon runner Peter Maher (who would eventually not finish his race), and individual show jumping equestrians Jay Hayes with Zucarlos and Jennifer Foster with Zeus  (neither would end up advance close to the medal stage, thus complete Canada shutting out altogether of any Barcelona 1992 equestrian medals). Co-hosted in Barcelona at CTV's IBC Olympic studios by Dan Matheson and Rob Faulds, who replaced this segment for Tracy Wilson as she prepared to later cover the Closing Ceremony with CTV National News anchor legend Lloyd Robertson. All to Chris De Burgh's Shine On beginning with the Leduc slo-mo boxing montage:

Rod Black, apparently the man in Canadian sports TV broadcasting during the 1990s, acted as the CTV Barcelona 1992 primetime anchor studio host. Matheson hosted apparently the CTV Olympic Daytime segments like here usually with Wilson. Jiggs MacDonald performed the Barcelona Olympic basketball play-by-play, which included the Dream Team matches (and, had they qualified out of Portland, Canada's games surely too--actually supposed to join Yugoslavia to expand the 1992 basketball field to 14 teams if the latter was allowed to play in team sports). Ron Reusch called Olympic baseball games, its Olympic debut as an official sport, in his third Olympics overall at that point for CTV. Faulds did some events, I think. There were others that I mentioned earlier (with others and additional info added subsequently) and will bring back as a reminder.

[Durban Sandshark]

Quite possibly the oldest American Winter Olympics TV promo out there. ABC's promo for its first ever Winter Olympics broadcast from Innsbruck, Austria in 1964 with 16.5 hours as most of the coverage was away from primetime after CBS did both Squaw Valley and Rome in 1960. Focusing on the sports and their respective appeals and not the athletes, as it would later do, this promo. ABC's American broadcast rights to this costed nearly $600,000 at the time. As the United States was transitioning towards color TV at this time, the coverage was taped and flown by plane back to the United States and all of it was in black-and-white, but with most Winter Olympic events in the morning (local time), most TV coverage aired in the USA the day the events were held. A portion of the Closing Ceremony was televised live via satellite (Telstar, which had to be tracked and allowed about a 15-minute window between the USA and Europe when it was zooming over the Atlantic). Everything else was videotaped and flown to the USA via a Munich-London-New York air route. There was little margin for error. Should a flight got canceled, ABC had a tape of a USA-Romania hockey game, played the day before the Opening Ceremony and shipped over, ready to play. All went well and it never made the air. This was an important one as this began a 2-decade relationship between ABC and the IOC with Roone Arledge at the helm in the former that would last until 1988. Also Jim McKay, ABC's Innsbruck 1964 host, started his ABC streak too having moved away from CBS and became synonymous with that network's sports stable--and many of the ABC's famed Wide World of Sports production staff worked during this project too:

You may think CTV in Canada may have started its broadcasting coverage with Calgary in 1988. That isn't true. CTV, in fact, was doing it right around during the same time period as ABC starting with 1964 and onwards to 1994 with the Winter Olympics, sometimes sharing it with the CBC in 1980 and 1984, while the CBC would largely handle the summer version. Obviously, given that both Canada tends to historically fare better more consistently with winter sports like ice hockey and figure skating and has a proven and lucrative national TV viewing audience for them (and popular winter sports), a private, commercial broadcaster like CTV would swoop in to buy the Canadian TV broadcasting rights. CTV would, however, share with CTV the Summer Olympics in 1976, when Canada hosted, and 1984. Except for 2010-2012 of course, CTV would never touch both again. As this CTV Olympiad 1980 TV promo indicates, CTV planned to broadcast both Lake Placid and Moscow that year, but the Canadian government in Ottawa joined the American-led boycott, and Canadian athletes were thus denied competition in the Soviet Union--despite showing some footage from both Innsbruck and Montreal on it. If I recall correctly, the CBC was supposed to take the lion's share of the Canadian TV broadcasting coverage for Moscow. Too bad we'll never know what the coverage would look like from CBC and CTV for Moscow 1980; I certainly would be curious:

 

[Durban Sandshark]

Remember V, that Montreal-based French-Canadian TV network that acted as the free-to-air simulcaster for RDS for the Canadian Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium's Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 coverages in Quebec? The network in July 2008 was acquired by Remstar Corporation, a Montreal-based television and film producer and distributor when it was still TQS (for Television Quatre-Saison) and was already announced as part of the TV and radio broadcaster team for those Games since 2005. Creditors, who were owed more than C$33 million at the time, voted to accept the Remstar proposal in May that year with the CRTC approved the application on June 26, 2008. As Remstar was slashing 270 jobs in its acquisition, the company also disbanded TQS' news information sector until the CRTC told it to reinstate that while taking TQS' precarious financial situation into account. It was reinstated under a reduced amount until a 2011 relicensing hearing.  At the network's fall upfronts presentation for 2009, the network announced a repositioning plan, including a shedding of the TQS moniker and its black sheep logo in favour of the name "V", complete with a black-and-gold circle logo with a stylized letter V. The V name reflected the channel's new mission of "vedettes" (stars), "vitesse" (speed), "voyages" (trips), and "vice ou vérité" (vices or truths) with a new corporate name, the V Media Group. The rebranding went complete in saying goodbye to the TQS moniker to V on August 31, 2009 at 6am Canada/Mexico ET following informercials.

V shared morning coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2012 Summer Olympics with RDS, followed by its own afternoon and evening programming during Vancouver and London. As the network's carriage was limited outside of Quebec (unlike CBC's French rights holder Télévision de Radio-Canada, which is already national), the non-profit public affairs network CPAC (which has must-carry status nationwide) received special authorization from the CRTC to simulcast the coverage in order to ensure nationwide availability at all basic cable and satelitte providers for Francophone non-Quebec residents. Until this, V/TQS never held any Canadian Olympic French TV broadcasting rights; it always languishes behind rival French-Canadian TV networks SRC/Radio-Canada Television and TVA in viewership. Likely earned some of its biggest TV viewerships ever there and later with the 2022 Argentina-France FIFA World Cup Final.  

Well in July 2019, Bell Media Group, apparently in a move to have a FTA French TV outpost in its roster, bought V from the V Media Group, which by then wanted to focus on its specialty channels Elle Fictions and Max. Bell Media, with proposed the addition of expanded in-house news programming, also pledged to provide advertising and master control services for both Elle Fictions and Max after the sale getting approved on April 3, 2020 and sale concluding on May 15, 2020. As a condition of the purchase, the CRTC stated that all five V stations must air five hours of local programming per-week through the 2020-2021 broadcast year, and expanding to eight-and-a-half hours per-week in Montreal and Quebec City by 2021-2022. At least half of all local programming must be locally-reflective under the CTRC's terms. That soon prompted a brand new rebranding: On August 19, 2020, Bell Media announced that the V network would be rebranded as Noovo on August 31, taking its name from V's streaming platform of the same name and expanding its berth.

Sad news from down under: Gary Fenton passed away. As Head of Seven Sport in Australia, Fenton played a crucial role in securing multiple Australian Olympic broadcasting rights for the Seven Network, making it "Australia's Olympic Network" for many years. Fenton also acted as COO for the Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organization. Bruce McAvaney, who was brought back to Channel 7 in 1989 from Network Ten Australia (before the soon-to-be receivership) by Fenton with prominent positions there and witnessed how his role reshaped the IOC's media negotiating rights and the Sydney 2000 worldwide TV coverage, leads among the tributes:

https://televisionau.com/2023/02/obituary-gary-fenton.html

[Durban Sandshark]

Brief CBC Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics promo showing several sports with Canadians involved including curling making its debut during these Winter Games as a full fledged sport. Coverage overall was presented by Toyota as the CBC returned to Winter Olympics broadcasting after CTV handled Calgary back in 1988 (but would return later that summer of course for Barcelona):

Since I just now talked about Calgary, this is a snippet of ZDF's coverage from the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, known as overall as Olympia whenever the Olympics are broadcast in Germany, West Germany in this case prior to the Berlin Wall falling down. In this case, it's Olympiastudio Calgary that kickstarted the day that was, should you notice the Calgary clock was 5:55pm and 1:55am in Germany's CET (listed under Mainz near Frankfurt here) as Christa Gierke-Wdel hosted from ZDF's studio in Mainz for February 18, 1988 featuring the men's 1000m speed skating (shown here) at the then-innovative Calgary Olympic Oval and slated for later Canada-Finland Group A men's ice hockey and men's figure skating short program under the 1:55-5:00. Somehow the CTV Calgary 1988 logo manages to make a cameo here for Germany through ZDF. Already the audio quality was very good here instead of sounding like its talking to a telephone coming from many European broadcasters. Need to get the names later of the ZDF speed skating sportscasters for I didn't get well enough: 

 

[panamfan]

4 hours ago, Durban Sandshark said:

 

Since I just now talked about Calgary, this is a snippet of ZDF's coverage from the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics

 

Complete East German telecast of the Munich 1972 Opening Ceremony. Rare look at how the ceremony was covered on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

 

[TorchbearerSydney]

Wow, the Munich Opening was good...loved the electronic music of the flame....and the speed and efficiency of the flag raising!

[StefanMUC]

4 hours ago, panamfan said:

Complete East German telecast of the Munich 1972 Opening Ceremony. Rare look at how the ceremony was covered on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

 

Thanks - no time to watch it all, and I actually never watched the whole thing I just noticed, but had to chuckle at the first few minutes with the first reporter rambling on with GDR propaganda about strength of socialism. The second reporter, Heinz-Florian Oertel, was a legend of East German TV, also because he was not so much a propagandist, and he just died a few weeks ago aged 95.

[Durban Sandshark]

Dedicated in loving memory to the Seven Network Australia's longrunning Australian Olympic TV coverage and its distinction of that being "Australia's Olympic Network" since the 1980s up to 2022 partially, I present to some comprehensive info from the Media Spy's Australian Olympic Coverage History thread. You really learn a lot about this with vids, screenshots, PDFs (like 9's London 2012 Olympic TV schedule, which I regretted uploading on the London 2012 Media Updates), newspaper clippings, and photos going back to 1956 with the Melbourne Summer Olympics. Even some Commonwealth and Paralympic Games coverage. So far up to 109 pages:

https://forums.mediaspy.org/t/olympics-coverage-history/627/1614?page=109

Another thing I missed out on back with London 2012 is adding the ORF press release announcing its live 330-hour London 2012 Austrian TV coverage. Unfortunately, this was the first Summer Olympics since Tokyo 1964 that Austria got shut out of the medal count and that spooked the Austrian Olympic Committee:

https://tv-sport.de/index.php/so-viel-olympia-war-noch-nie-im-orf-330-stunden-live-aus-london-in-orf-eins-und-orf-sport/

I'm looking into sharing info on Radio-Canada's Los Angeles 1984 coverage. There's some info that got mentioned on SRC's Sylvie Bernard's 1984 gold medal-winning short doc--we'll definitely get to that. But it's not enough. We hope there's plenty of info here online elsewhere.  

[BigVic]

Seven will no longer air the Olympics from next after Nine won the entire Olympic rights from 2024-2032. 

[panamfan]

On 5/3/2023 at 9:16 PM, Durban Sandshark said:

Dedicated in loving memory to the Seven Network Australia's longrunning Australian Olympic TV coverage and its distinction of that being "Australia's Olympic Network" since the 1980s up to 2022 partially, I present to some comprehensive info from the Media Spy's Australian Olympic Coverage History thread. You really learn a lot about this with vids, screenshots, PDFs (like 9's London 2012 Olympic TV schedule, which I regretted uploading on the London 2012 Media Updates), newspaper clippings, and photos going back to 1956 with the Melbourne Summer Olympics. Even some Commonwealth and Paralympic Games coverage. So far up to 109 pages:

https://forums.mediaspy.org/t/olympics-coverage-history/627/1614?page=109

 

Complete Live Australian TV coverage of the 1984 Opening Ceremony:

 

[Durban Sandshark]

To that end, here's 10's (largely) Australian-centric 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics highlights program Blood, Sweat, and Cheers co-hosted by Rob Readings and Herb Elliott, reviewing Australia's overall performance then that was far better than Moscow...and Montreal. Easily one of its better Summer Olympics in recents memory at that point. Highlighted by Jon Sieben, Dean Lukin, the 4-man cycling team, and Glynis Nunn. I happen to like partly this because we get to see some rare Boomers basketball footage from Los Angeles. Quite encompassing, although no women's basketball footage that Australia did actually compete here in too. Laurie Lawrence was excitable here too like he famously was four years later:

Globo TV's intros for its Minuto Olimpico 1980 and 1984's Momento Olimpico. Since there's very little graphics and vids from Globo's Moscow 1980 Summer Olympics coverage, I can presume the 1980 one was part of its titles and was accompanied by Globo's Olympic sponsors. The 1980 Moscow Minuto Olimpico graphics do hold up well as does the LA one. Wish there was more. The 1984 one is much easier since we know how abundant Globo's 1984 version is relative in comparison:

And we got one such Momento Olimpico from Globo's upcoming Los Angeles 1984 coverage from January 27, 1984. With sponsors Coca-Cola, Itau Bank, Topper, and Volkswagen's Fusca. This one deals with British hurdler (and RAF officer) Donald Finlay and his bad luck in attempting to win gold during his Olympic career from Los Angeles 1932 to London 1948. The intro really screams the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics with the red, white, and blue stars:

 

[Durban Sandshark]

CBC's promo for its live Sydney 2000 Olympics Opening Ceremony presentation, co-hosted by Brian Williams and Alison Smith at Sydney's Stadium Australia at 3:45 am Canada ET on September 15, 2000 (with a reairing at 2pm noted below obviously for many Canadians who can't stay up that late). Need to see if there was a TSN simulcast. Doubt it though. Promo contains footage of the Atlanta 1996 Closing Ceremony's Sydney segment to emphasize the then-active host. I think this was Brian Williams' final Olympics OC with the CBC proper:

Seven Network Australia (taken from its Sydney affiliate) salutes Australia's then-best ever Summer Olympic Team, definitely its best home Olympics, also back in these awesome Games with 7's Today Tonight at 6.30 pm AEST in an Australian Olympic Team group session reliving those moments. Winning 58 medals overall there sitting at 4th with 16 golds, 28 silvers, and 17 bronzes can do that for Australia. This promo gets shown here three time but with the last one done by a female voiceover. Also starting at 1:42, Seven presented a separate but related live thank you Australian Sydney 2000 Olympians program, billed as an "exclusive national broadcast" since the Seven Network held the Australian TV rights, held at the Sydney Capitol Theatre with performances from John Farham and Tina Arena that was part of a national salute that included the Aussie public's voting their fave Australian Sydney 2000 athlete(s). It's the Australian Olympic Team Celebration at 7:30 pm AEST: