During Wednesday night’s CBS telecast of the Winter Olympics figure-skating showdown between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, there were 19 commercial interruptions. Certainly not enough to drive viewers away, because the program nearly set all kinds of ratings records. But annoying to some, nevertheless.
The commercial load “is the same as it was last time,” CBS Sports vice president Mark Harrington said Thursday. “And if you don’t have the commercials, you don’t get the rights to the Games, and you don’t have the money to do the production. If you’re going to do it, you have to raise the money to do it with.”
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And Wednesday night’s telecast also was marked by only one up-close-and-personal feature-on Ukrainian skater Oksana Bayul.
“How can you do too many features?” said Harrington. “We had the same as we did last time. We had the right mix of features. That’s become a sort of facile criticism. We have put lots of competition on. We said from the beginning we were going to use the features to personalize the competition. The criticism of too many features comes from people who only want to watch one sport. You can’t give people only one sport, because then you deny someone else’s sport. We try to mix it up so we have all the sports on.”
Harrington pointed to Tuesday night’s telecast. “It had a huge audience (24.9 rating with a 36 share), and that was a night without any traditional American sports on,” he said. “It was a mix of features and coverage of that day’s events, and people loved to watch it. Television can take you somewhere you don’t ordinarily go. So this is a chance to take people to Norway.”
Post-Games effect: Even before Wednesday night’s extravaganza, CBS was crowing about its Olympic-sized ratings. For the week ending Feb. 20, the network posted a 25.9 average Nielsen rating with a 40 share, nearly 150 percent better than its nearest competitor, ABC (10.4/16). CBS has won every prime-time half-hour since the Games began Feb. 12.
“We didn’t need the Olympics to win the season,” says CBS research chief David Poltrack, noting the network’s lead going into the February sweeps period. But the Olympics ratings could aid the CBS midseason replacements due next week. “Everything will depend on how we can launch our new shows (`Tom,’ `The Road Home’) off the Olympics,” Poltrack added.
Airtime: WBBM-AM again will carry a live broadcast of the figure-skating showdown Friday, with Mark Champion and Paul Wylie. Harding is scheduled to skate at approximately 1:55 p.m., while Kerrigan goes off at 2:35 p.m. For those who heard the radio version of Wednesday’s competition, it was weird. Wylie, a longtime friend of Kerrigan’s, showed no impartiality while calling the action: “(Kerrigan) could not have skated this program any better, and I’m so proud of her.” And his descriptions left something to be desired: “She’s skating forward (pause) and now she’s going to turn backwards.” Only golf on the radio could be as compelling.
Last word: Perhaps Jim Simpson, figure-skating commentator for TNT (which will air its final Lillehammer telecast at noon Friday), summed up the spectacle best: “This is the strangest thing I’ve seen in 13 Olympic Games I’ve covered,” he said. “One of our team goes around with only her lawyer, who is accredited, and the other goes around with only her agent, who is also accredited. What are their coaches and teammates?”
TNT’s coverage, down 16 percent in its ratings from Albertville after a record-setting 4.1 rating for Wednesday afternoon’s telecast, will conclude Friday with live coverage of the Canada-Finland semifinal hockey game and the ladies’ figure-skating long program. Well, not all the ladies. “We’ll report news of other skaters (by the names of Harding and Kerrigan) as results warrant,” said a TNT spokesman. “But we won’t do what CBS does (telling viewers who don’t want to know to `look away’). We don’t have another window to show the results; Friday is our last day.”
Last thoughts: Pat O’Brien’s Olympic late-night show lost its zip from Albertville for two reasons: It followed David Letterman (who, with the aid of his spunky mom, spent half his time poking fun at the Games and CBS’ coverage) and O’Brien’s show, at an hour, was twice as long as it was in ’92. . . . “Inside Edition” continues its in-depth (and exclusive-for a reported $500,000) interview with Harding by Joel Loy at 3 p.m. Friday on WLS-Ch. 7 . . . And for those who take their controversies on the lighter side, Comedy Central reruns the wonderfully funny “Spunk: The Tonya Harding Story,” the five-minute film starring Tina Yothers, four consecutive times starting at 10 p.m. Friday. Included in the cast is Chicago actress Cynthia Caponera as Tonya’s mother, LaVona.
Other stuff: Testimony in the WGN-Ch. 9 suit against the National Basketball Association over Bulls telecasts has ended. Federal Judge Hubert L. Will won’t decide the case for a while, however, because documents still have to be filed and closing arguments from both sides have to be heard. . . . New White Sox outfielder Darrin Jackson guests as George Castle’s “Chicago Baseball Weekly” moves to its new time slot this week at 9 a.m. Saturdays on WCBR-FM.