After a 12-year run, with stops in Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Athens and Turin, the CBC has reached the end of the road.
The Beijing Olympics will be the network's last until at least 2014, but it isn't leaving quietly. The plan is to wrap it up with a flourish.
The Olympic budget has been increased. The amount of programming, because of extensive online streaming, has rocketed to more than 1,500 hours, although the content on the main network has dropped slightly to 282 hours from 294 hours in Athens four years ago.
Special analysts, including Perdita Felicien, the former world champion hurdler, and Sacha Trudeau, a documentary filmmaker and son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, have been hired.
Adam van Koeverden, the reigning Olympic and world champion in the 500-metre kayak singles (centre), is interviewed by the CBC's Ron McLean, left, after being selected as Canada's flag-bearer for the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday July 23, 2008 in Oakville, Ont. (J.P. Moczulski/The Canadian Press)
This also will be the CBC's most expensive Olympics. The corporation paid $45-million for the rights, well above the previous high of $33-million for Athens.
The CBC won't comment on whether money will be made from the Beijing coverage, but Scott Moore, the head of sports, believes the show will be worth the cost of admission.
“I'm convinced Beijing will be the most spectacular, most compelling and most important Olympic Games of our lifetime,” he said. “From a geopolitical standpoint, these are incredibly important Games. People are fascinated by the prospect of China either having a great coming-out party or not being as open as they promised they would be.”
In many ways, the Ling Long Pagoda, an impressive tower that houses the CBC Olympic studio, symbolizes two contrasting themes that television will pursue at Beijing.
One will be largely visual – the pictures of an exotic, somewhat mysterious country and the architectural edifices produced out of Beijing's Olympic investment of more than $40-billion.
The other will be news oriented – covering the environmental problems that could play havoc with the athletes and functioning inside the bureaucratic red tape of China.
“The tower is absolutely spectacular,” Moore said. “It's a great view. The problem is if the pollution continues to be as bad as it has been, the rest of the city is pretty much washed out in a haze.”
Just how effectively television will be able to cut through the haze and bring clarity to the story of Beijing playing host to the Olympics remains to be seen.
Certainly the CBC is treating Beijing, and the curiosity surrounding it, as a news story almost as much as it is a world sporting event.
The involvement of journalists from the news department will include Vancouver anchor Ian Hanomansing, who will be the late-night host, and Toronto anchor Diana Swain, who will be co-host of the morning show. Mark Kelley will report on human-interest stories. Trudeau, who has worked in China, will be part of the reporting team and will also provide commentary.
“Sacha's role for us is to provide an understanding to our viewers,” said Trevor Pilling, the Olympic executive producer. “He will help us gain some insight into the host nation.”
Some of this insight also will come from examining the Chinese media's own coverage of the Games, Hanomansing said.
“It will be interesting to get, as best we can, how the Chinese government sells its efforts at the Olympics within the country,” he said. “One thing I think the Western world got a sense of during the [protest-plagued] torch relay was that the story played a lot differently in China than it did outside China.
“Within China, people were startled that anyone would react to the torch the way people reacted to it in Europe and San Francisco.”
Moore believes Beijing programming will get more viewers than the Athens coverage, because it is China, and also because the 12-hour difference between Beijing and the Eastern time zone in North America will allow for live coverage in prime time starting at 9 p.m., something that wasn't possible at Athens.
What's more, NBC successfully lobbied to schedule the swimming and gymnastics finals for the morning, allowing evening coverage in North America.
The CBC will pretty much go wall to wall with its coverage, except in the afternoons, when it's the dead of night in Beijing. Also, everything carried on the main network will be available in high-definition television. Cable partner TSN will air 150 hours of programming, in HDTV, with CBC Newsworld providing 145 hours. Another CBC channel, Bold, will air 250 hours of equestrian and sailing content.
Online programming will be streamed on cbcsports.ca live from nine venues, but without commentary. French-language coverage will consist of 263 hours on Radio-Canada and 206 hours on Réseau des Sports.
In addition to increasing its budget by $100,000, the CBC saved money by keeping 60 per cent of its Olympic production staff, about 180 people, at home.
Technological advances allowed the CBC to base its Olympic control room and editing suites in Toronto. As well, several play-by-play announcers will call events off a monitor from Toronto rather than on-site. Moore said cost saving was used to hire special correspondents and analysts.
Ron MacLean will be the prime-time host. Scott Russell will be co-host with Swain in the morning. Dave Randorf and Gino Reda will be TSN's anchors.
Former Olympian Marianne Limpert will work as a guest analyst with Mark Tewksbury, who was effective in that role at Athens. In track and field, Donovan Bailey and former Olympic hurdler Rosey Edeh, a correspondent for ET Canada, will provide guest analysis. New to Games coverage are Olympians Clara Hughes (cycling) and Hayley Wickenheiser (softball).
And then, 17 days later, it will be over. At the conclusion of the closing ceremony on Aug. 24, the CBC will watch from the sidelines as CTV and its Olympic partners prepare for 2010 Vancouver and 2012 London.
Will the CBC be back any time soon? That's certainly the plan.
“It will be interesting to see what happens in the next round of bids, because clearly we would like to get back in the game for 2014 [Sochi, Russia],” Moore said. “We're not looking to be out of the Olympics forever.”
W.H. .... having said that, I wonder how long CTV will be able to financially "carry it"? The games have really turned too expensive over the years, and I think what will have to happen is that "exclusive rights" will end up becoming "partnered pool rights".
As well, several play-by-play announcers will call events off a monitor from Toronto rather than on-site.
This makes the whole on-air product sloppy! Why not spend an extra couple of bucks and send the actual announcer to Beijing? I can't count how many times now that there has been audio problems because of a glitch in T.O.
And what's with CBC's facination with USA athletes? Ron MacLean and some other joker were going on and on about Michael Phelps last night for about 30 minutes.... Why not talk about a Canadian Athlete? Just because Brian Johns didn't finish first last night in the 400m relay swim, doesn't mean they can't interview the guy! GO USA... Oh wait, GO CANADA!....
The other night I saw on two separate monitors - CBC on ExpressVu, and NBC - both were covering the same swimming meet with the (no pun) pool feed. One of the British swimmers won, and while they all gathered their breaths, the CBC focussed in on the winner's reaction post race, while the NBC soley focussed on the dejected American swimmers, and never really cut to the winner. That's why some Americans don't even know where China is, let alone the names of other countries.
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