NBC featurizing Olympic coverage
by Ed Bark, The Dallas Morning News (KRT)

    The intertwined Olympic rings long have signified five continents competing peacefully in a wide variety of athletic competitions.

   Look closer, though, and you might see a three-ring circus bordered by a pair of soap bubbles.

   If so, you’ve been watching NBC, which is presenting the Games as a winter carnival of sights, sounds and melodramatic storylines punctuated by Jay Leno’s shtick-packed “Olympic” Tonight Show.

   It’s a no-boundaries environment where gold-medal winners hear their national anthems played on the same stage later rocked by groups such as Foo Fighters and Barenaked Ladies.

   And where skier Picabo Street was canonized by commentators before a last bid for Olympic glory ended with a 16th-place finish Tuesday behind two barely noticed teammates.

   “We’re not getting to see natural drama. We’re getting to see pre-packaged drama,” said American University director of athletics Tom George, who previously orchestrated the marketing of Olympic heroes including speedskater Bonnie Blair.

   “It’s almost like you’re watching a soap opera,” he said.

   NBC also is the place where prime-time anchor Bob Costas told viewers he’ll be picking up bar tabs in the West Dover, Vt., hometown of snowboard champ Kelly Clark.

   And check out brawny U.S. bobsledders Jean Racine and Gea Johnson, who visited Leno’s show before they headed for Salt Lake City.

   “Hey, baby,” he greeted Johnson before she promised to lift him over her head if she emerges a gold medalist.

   The overall presentation “probably is too packaged for sports fans, but it seems just right for non-sports fans,” said Susan Eastman, telecommunications professor at Indiana University.

   “It’s colorful, upbeat, fast-paced and, in the short term, it builds broad-based ratings,” she said.

   To which NBC executives might add, “Get used to it.”

   The network paid $545 million to telecast the 2002 Winter Olympics, which so far are drawing 25 percent more viewers than the 1998 Games from Nagano, Japan.

   NBC also has a $2.3 billion contract to present the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece; the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy; and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

   At those prices, straight-from-the-shoulder, jocks ’n’ socks presentations are out of the question, NBC executives contend.

   “The Olympics really are much more than a sporting event,” Randy Falco, chief operating officer of NBC’s Olympics coverage, said in a teleconference.

   “It really is an entertainment event, and in that sense it brings to the set a much more diverse audience,” he said.

   Super Bowls and Oscar telecasts likewise cut across age and generational divides, but for one night only.

   As a half-month sports miniseries, the Olympics are “in the tradition of the ’50s and ’60s, where the whole family can come in front of the television set for a show,” said NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol.

   “We live in a much more ‘nichey’ society, and the Olympics tend to bring young and old together,” he said.

   Not without a fight, though, particularly among a new generation of 18- to 34-year-olds.

   “They have a lot of other outlets and interests,” Falco said.

   “That’s one of the reasons why our promotional campaign really targeted young viewers for the Olympics,” he said.

   Nielsen Media Research says that 18- to 34-year-olds are responding, although not like viewers overall.

   The first three nights of Olympics coverage ranked fifth, seventh and 12th for the week among the younger audience but could not come close to beating back-to-back episodes of Friends.

   The Olympic telecasts are not a hit in black households, however. Friday’s opening ceremony, a runaway No. 1 last week in total viewers, did not make the top 10 attractions among African-Americans. Their No. 1 choice was The Bernie Mac Show on Fox.

   Comedian Dave Chappelle, one of the Olympic Tonight Show’s on-site “correspondents,” stated the obvious Monday night when he played “find the black guy in the crowd” at the snowboarding venue.

   The cameras found one man waving from the back.

   Recently added “X-Game” competitions such as snowboarding and moguls skiing have figured prominently in NBC’s prime-time coverage.

   U.S. moguls star Jonny Moseley, already booked to host the March 2 Saturday Night Live before he came up short of a medal Tuesday, brought his daring “dinner roll” jump to the proceedings.

   The on-air description of the maneuver by analyst Trace Worthington was not exactly in the mold of longtime Olympic anchor Jim McKay.

   “He mixes the water with a little flour, adds the yeast, preheats the oven, bakes it, the dough rises and he delivers a fresh dinner roll!” Worthington enthused.

   There was not nearly as much dough at stake the previous time the Winter Olympics originated on home soil.

   It cost ABC a scant $15.5 million to telecast the 1980 Games from Lake Placid, N.Y., which climaxed with the U.S. hockey team’s stunning capture of the gold medal.

   ABC’s then-whopping 53.5 hours of Olympic coverage contrasts with NBC’s 168.5 hours from Salt Lake City and an additional 207 hours on cable partners CNBC and MSNBC.

   The Games in Salt Lake City opened with a prime-time, star-driven extravaganza that went twice as long as the relatively plain-wrapped afternoon opening ceremony from Lake Placid.

   “It was like an elaborate Ice Capades,” University of Cincinnati communications professor Michael Porte said of the opening ceremony.

   The Olympic torch had barely been lit when Leno joined NBC’s coverage.

   “I thought the ceremony was great,” he told co-hosts Costas and Katie Couric.

   “I especially liked it when all the ‘axis-of-evil’ countries came in together. I thought that was very, very moving,” he said.

   Leno’s Olympic Tonight Show since has been a key player in NBC’s coverage, with guests ranging from first lady Laura Bush to pop singer Britney Spears.

   The show’s accompanying Olympic segments and Leno’s monologues have been heavily spiked with drug and sex humor.

   Noting that the 1980 U.S. hockey team had lit the Olympic flame together, he asked, “What is it about lighting up that makes people pass things around?”

   It is all part of NBC’s big Olympics show, which will continue through closing ceremonies.

   Happening today: the skeleton competition, in which sledders rocket downhill headfirst.

   Or as Leno put it on Tuesday’s show, “Riding the skeleton. That sounds like Anna Nicole Smith’s honeymoon, doesn’t it?”