Reviews of Nbc Telecast of 2018 Winter Olympics
NBC Opens Olympics With 'Worst Hand Imaginable'
The control room at NBC Sports studios in Stamford, Conn., where NBC is dissemination its 2022 Winter Olympics coverage. Credit... Landon Speers for The New York Times
John Koblin has covered the media industry for more than a decade.
Last year, NBC Sports executives called the Tokyo Olympics their most challenging undertaking e'er.
Now that experience is starting to expect like a cakewalk.
For this month'due south Winter Games in Beijing, NBC confronts an even trickier mix of challenges, threatening to diminish one of the network's signature products and one of the last major draws to broadcast boob tube.
The list of headaches is long: an event well-nigh gratis of spectators, draining excitement from the arena and ski slopes; the threat of star athletes testing positive for Covid, potentially dashing their Olympic dreams; and the vast majority of its announcers, including Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski, offering color commentary from a network chemical compound in Stamford, Conn., instead of Red china.
The rise political tensions betwixt the Usa and Prc, including over China'southward human rights abuses, add a troubling deject to a typically feel-good spectacle.
"My friends and colleagues at NBC take been dealt the worst hand imaginable," said Bob Costas, who served as the network's Olympics prime number-time host for more than two decades.
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The success of the Games is disquisitional to NBC. Even as streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ have lured millions of people from broadcast networks, sports have remained a reliable moneymaker. The company has exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2032, at a cost of $7.75 billion.
Ratings for the Olympics take dipped in contempo years — and fell sharply during last year'due south Summer Olympics. NBC has told advertisers to look the ratings to be lower than the 2018 Wintertime Olympics, according to 3 people familiar with the network'due south ratings estimates.
The Olympics, yet, remain and so central to the NBC brand that the v-rings logo has been affixed to the bottom-correct-hand corner of its broadcasts for much of the last year.
And NBC Sports executives said they were upwards to the challenge to produce a compelling event.
"The expert news, if there is proficient news, in dealing with alive sports in a pandemic, is we have a ton of experience at this point," said Pete Bevacqua, the chairman of NBC Sports. "Think about the last ii years across our portfolio. We take become skilled out of necessity. We saw that in Tokyo, where we had an unbelievably large presence in Stamford."
Mike Tirico, an NBC Sports anchor, is in Beijing and will host the outset few days of coverage from China. Craig Melvin, an NBC News anchor, will exist in Beijing as well, forth with 600 other staff members on the ground.
But because of China's Covid-xix restrictions, near of the sports commentators will be in Stamford, part of a crew of well-nigh 1,500 people in that location. And NBC will not have access to many aspects of the Games that viewers are accustomed to: charming travelogue segments about a host city; live shots of an athlete'south family and friends, who have traveled to a strange country to see a loved one compete; commentators rushing upwardly to a competitor who just scored gold.
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NBC will deploy workarounds, including setting upward cameras in the homes of athletes' family members to try to replicate a celebratory television moment that viewers await to see. And in interviews, producers and executives said that NBC'southward wealth of Olympic product feel would simply help matters.
"The replays will exist there, the slow motion will be there, the graphics, all of that volition be visually spectacular," said Mike Weisman, a former longtime executive producer for NBC Sports who oversaw coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics.
Still, because of China's strict virus-testing policy, at that place are many promotional benefits to other parts of NBC Universal that the company volition take to forgo this year. For years, the NBC morning franchise, "Today," also as the "NBC Nightly News," moved their broadcasts to the Olympic host urban center, providing a ratings elevator in the process.
But this year, the "Today" anchors, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, will stay in New York, the first time in nigh two decades that the morning evidence has not traveled for the Olympics. Lester Holt, the "NBC Nightly News" anchor, will also remain in New York.
"Would you rather take 'Today' there? Yes," said Jim Bong, a former executive producer of "Today," besides NBC's Olympics coverage from 2012 to 2018. "Would you lot rather accept fans in the stands? You bet. Would y'all rather have Johnny and Tara and set them loose on the streets of Beijing? Of course. But if it comes down to you can't take the Olympics because of the pandemic, it's better than not having it."
Politics is calculation another twist. NBC executives unremarkably bank on the Olympics as a politics-proof treat for viewers that transcends ideological differences. But even that bubble has been pierced. Last week, House Republicans sent a alphabetic character to NBC executives asking near the "the extent of influence" that the Chinese regime will accept over the network's circulate of the Games. In Dec, President Biden appear a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics because of China's human rights abuses.
"The circumstances put an inevitable damper on the whole thing," Mr. Costas said. "The average person at present fully understands the nature of the Chinese regime. It's not something that just news nerds are aware of. This is broadly understood."
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Mr. Weisman, the former NBC Sports producer, said, "Especially existence in Prc, I call up it may not take the aforementioned feel-good celebration that had made the Olympics and then special in the past."
NBC said it would utilise Andrew Browne, an editorial manager at Bloomberg and formerly the Red china editor at The Wall Street Journal, and Jing Tsu, a professor at Yale, to help provide analysis on China during the broadcasts.
"The world, as nosotros all know, is a really complicated identify right now," Molly Solomon, the executive producer of NBC's Olympics coverage, said in a news media briefing in Jan. "And we sympathize that in that location's some difficult issues regarding the host nation. So our coverage will provide perspective on China's place in the earth and the geopolitical context in which these games are being held."
"But," she continued, "the athletes do remain the centerpiece of our coverage."
NBC is also hoping that the Games can provide a boost for its fledgling streaming app, Peacock. The company is encouraging people to sign upwards for a paid version of the app that will show all the Olympic events live.
Executives have vowed to brand Peacock easier to use this year afterwards an outcry from subscribers who complained the streamer was a inexplainable mess for last twelvemonth's Summertime Games.
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In that location is a bright spot for NBC: The network is guaranteed to get a ratings boost in the middle of the Olympics. On Feb. 13, NBC will circulate the Super Bowl, and immediately subsequently the presentation of the Vince Lombardi trophy, the network will become straight to Olympic coverage. In recent years, programs that followed the Super Bowl generally have drawn more 20 one thousand thousand viewers.
With the Super Basin gradually drifting subsequently into Feb, this will be the commencement time that the two signature sporting events will overlap. NBC switched its spot with CBS in the Super Basin broadcast rotation to ensure it could circulate both events on the aforementioned day. NBC executives are calling it Super Gilded Sunday.
"A once-in-a-lifetime moment," Jenny Storms, NBCUniversal's primary marketing officeholder for entertainment and sports, said last month.
Mr. Bevacqua, the NBC Sports chairman, said he was hopeful that the Olympics, instead of being a downer, would be a tonic to viewers exhausted by the pandemic.
"Certainly there are challenges, and certainly in that location are harsh realities," he said. "Merely I call up the beauty of sports and the beauty of Olympic sports is really needed right now more e'er, and that'due south the story we want to tell."
Mr. Costas said he expected NBC to be smart and resourceful. "But inevitably, no affair how good a task they practice, those circumstances are going to have an impact," he said.
Tiffany Hsu contributed reporting.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/business/media/olympics-nbc.html
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