Not even a gold medal could change the plans of CBS Sports officials to show Sunday’s downhill ski race in prime time.
“Our broadcast plan hasn’t changed from the start,” said a CBS spokeswoman Sunday. “Our live afternoon coverage will be hockey because our research shows that’s the one thing viewers won’t watch on tape. The marquee events will be shown at night.”
Unfortunately for the network, Tommy Moe’s victory came before even the morning show hit the air, meaning viewers had to wait more than 12 hours to watch the actual event.
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“Our goal remains the same,” said CBS Executive Producer Rick Gentile earlier, “to build a movie every night.”
And viewers, if opening night was any indication, don’t seem to mind. No doubt aided in some measure by “Skategate,” Saturday’s telecast was the most-watched opening ceremonies for any Winter Games as 19.6 million saw all or part of the show, easily topping the 17.3 million who watched ABC’s opening night of the 1980 Lake Placid Games. The Nielsen rating for Saturday night of 20.8 was a 43 percent increase over the 14.5 for the opening ceremonies two years ago at Albertville. Said CBS ratings guru David Poltrack: “That’s a very enouraging sign. The audience built and stayed to the end.”
And CBS plans to retain its exclusivity-and prime-time tape telecasts-for the ladies’ figure-skating competition next week. TNT, its weekday cable partner, will be allowed to show Tonya Harding and/or Nancy Kerrigan at practice “if we let them,” said a CBS official. “We have exclusivity of everything inside the Olympic venues, including practices.”
For openers: Greg Gumbel and Andrea Joyce hosted a smooth opening telecast Saturday night, helped, no doubt, by the fact the Norwegians concentrated on traditional fare rather than the abstract art the French offered two years ago. From the stunning pictures of Stein Gruben’s electrifying flame-carrying jump to IOC chief Juan Antonio Samaranch’s dramatic plea to “please stop fighting” in Bosnia, CBS did a masterful job of putting the pieces together.
Other highlights included Gumbel describing a particularly balky reindeer as “he misbehaved in rehearsals, and he wasn’t terrific today,” reporter Mark Phillips’ report on Sarajevo today (“The hills are alive with the sound of death”) and commentator Charles Kuralt summing up the night as “all so clean and cold and pure and right.”
The only lowlight was Pat O’Brien’s hurried tour of Lillehammer’s Storgata. What was the rush? As for O’Brien’s own late-night show, it was another fast-paced, hipper-than-thou potpourri of features, including a nostalgic piece by Kuralt on the 1992 Winter Games.
Quick change: Too much snow in the Northeast caused not only postponement of the Georgetown-Providence basketball game Saturday afternoon but sent CBS Sports officials scrambling to fill the two-hour time slot. The Hoyas waited until 8 a.m. Saturday (Chicago time) before they decided they couldn’t get to Providence, leaving the network five hours to come up with alternative programming. Fortunately, CBS had this little thing called the Olympics to fall back on. One network official, sounding like Mickey Rooney, said: “We’re here; let’s do a two-hour live show.”
“This is the kind of TV I like best,” said Jim Nantz, who hosted the bonus coverage Saturday from Lillehammer. (Although an obviously fatigued Nantz paid the price Sunday morning when he first said AJ Kitt had won the downhill gold medal.) “It’s hectic, but that’s live TV,” added Nantz.
Olympian notes: So much for the new technology. Mike Dunham told CBS he “didn’t feel comfortable” wearing Goalie-Cam in the U.S. Olympic opener Sunday against France. Instead, director Sandy Grossman gave us shots of celebrities Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, Nancy Kerrigan, George Steinbrenner, USOC Executive Director Harvey Schiller and-oh, yes-CBS Sports President Neal Pilson. . . . Sports anchor Jim Huber hosts “Should Tonya Skate?” at 9 p.m. Monday, including a live interview with Eleanor Holm Whalen, who was kicked off the 1936 U.S. Olympic team for drinking champagne on the way to Berlin. And Harding thinks she’s got it rough.
Programming notes: SportsChannel, in association with the March of Dimes, presents its “Sports Awards” dinner live at 8 p.m. Tuesday. . . . A reminder: With “NewSport Tonite” debuting at 5 p.m. Monday on SportsChannel, “Chicago Harness Racing” and “Chicago Racing Report” move up an hour. . . . Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit video moves to network TV when “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit ’94: The 30th Anniversary’ ” airs at 9 p.m. Wednesday on ABC.
And finally: It figured NBC would present a Skategate-free sports program. Not once during its Sunday telecast of the NBA All-Star Game did anyone say the name Tonya.