Transcript
[TAPE FROM OLYMPICS COVERAGE PLAYS]
MAN: "I want to win the gold medal as much as I want to mother a child." That is Svetlana Khorkina. She loves the attention. We're going to miss her, and she's going to miss this.
MIKE PESCA: The Super Bowl is to sports as the Olympics are to-- well, it should also be sports --but the Olympics look like a sporting event. If you get close enough, they smell like a sporting event, and they frequently involve pulled groins. But still, there's something about the Olympics which just doesn't feel like sport. Neil Pilson, now a sports media consultant, oversaw several Olympics when he was president of CBS Sports in the 1990s.
NEIL PILSON: The Olympics are probably closer to being an entertainment property than a sports property, and as an entertainment property, you are looking for that much broader audience.
MIKE PESCA: The Olympics simply don't work like other sporting events, as we experience them. That is to say, they're not debated on sports talk radio. The highlights aren't shown endlessly on ESPN, and because of time delays, it's pretty hard not to know who won beforehand. Seventy-five percent of the people who watch most TV sports are men. Sixty percent of Olympics viewers are women. As a result, while the Olympics make a lot of money for NBC and draw on all sorts of non-traditional sports fans, they turn out not to be especially appealing to the foam-finger-waving, statistic-devouring, season-ticket-holding, typical American fan.
JIM JACKSON: Although, yeah, I'm rooting for the United States to do well in the Olympics, I'm just not as interested, really.
SCOTT ZIGLER: It all depends on what's on against it. If it's a baseball game and the Yankees are on, I'd rather watch that than the Olympics.
MIKE PESCA: Jim Jackson from Massachusetts and Scott Zigler from Pittsburgh were busy shopping this week at the Yankees' team store in midtown Manhattan. If anyone should be watching the biggest televised sporting event of the summer on TV, it's these two men -- huge fans of football and baseball. But they're not watching much. Neither is WFAN's Mike Francesa, co-host of the most popular local sports radio show in America. By all rights, he should love the Olympics. He vividly remembers Sugar Ray Leonard and the Spinks brothers winning gold in Montana in '76. But these days--
MIKE FRANCESA: If I didn't watch one minute of the Olympics, I would not feel cheated. I really wouldn't.
MIKE PESCA: For one thing, Francesa says in prime time NBC doesn't play the sports he likes --boxing, basketball, synchronized swimming --just kidding about the last one. Also, Francesa and others like him are more outcome-oriented than your typical Olympics viewer.
MIKE FRANCESA: The taped aspect is very difficult for the regular sports fan. There's nothing a sports fan hates more -- is to get a result and then watch an event.
MIKE PESCA: But NBC's statistics show that ratings actually go up for taped events if the news of an American victory gets out beforehand. In other words, the same thing that drives traditional fans crazy, drives Olympic fans to the TV. And "Olympic fans" is the right phrase, according to former sports exec Neil Pilson. He points to a sport like beach volleyball, which gets a 1 rating normally. But during the Olympics it gets a 5 or a 6. And in prime time, beach volleyball gets a rating of 16 to 18.
NEIL PILSON: The American public is interested in the Olympics, and not necessarily in specific sports.
MIKE PESCA: What's great for NBC is death for other outlets trying to cover the Olympics. Because NBC paid over three quarters of a billion dollars for the rights to these games, Olympic Committee imposes strict limits on anyone else who wants to use footage. As a result, even though producer David Brofsky makes sure the Olympics are well covered on his network, ESPN, there's a high degree of difficulty.
DAVID BROFSKY: We can't show footage until after 3 a.m., and on any one given day, we can only show it for 24 hours.
CHRIS WRAGGI: It's a video medium, you know, with television [LAUGHS] so-- not having the movie pictures --I mean to me, it's always a bit ridiculous to have to show still photos. That I don't like to do. So yeah, I don't put as much into it as we probably would.
MIKE PESCA: Chris Wraggi does the 6 and 11 o'clock sportscast on WCBS-New York. Things are a lot different at CBS compared to his old job at NBC.
CHRIS WRAGGI: If your with the rights-fees network, it's heaven on earth. If you're not, or even if you're with an affiliate, forget about it. You'd rather be dragged over hot coals.
MIKE PESCA: As for the viewer, the Olympic Games often become a little like the biathlon -- first, it's a test of endurance. You carefully avoid radio, internet and random snatches of conversation which mention who won. Later, the exact opposite -- you concentrate steadily, knowing if your attention is drawn from NBC for a moment, you won't be able to watch highlights anywhere else. Of course the alternative would be a little jarring. Imagine ESPN Equestrian Tonight analyzing game film of the New Zealand rider totally blowing her trot half pass. For a little over two weeks every four years, the sports world and the TV sports world become a little unfamiliar. But eventually, badminton goes back to being something you play at a barbecue, and the Indians are a team from Cleveland, not the silver medalists in the men's double trap. [OLYMPICS THEME MUSIC]
MIKE PESCA: Up next, one journalist who refused to chase down rumors, use anonymous sources or let anyone go off the record. He wasn't fired. In fact, he's now remembered as one of the greats of the profession. You can listen to On the Media on line and get free transcripts and MP3 downloads at onthemedia.org. This is On the Media from NPR.