Sit back and enjoy the Olympic ride
Part sporting event, part social spectacle, the Olympics remains one of television’s last great communal events. Cynics may carp about growing corporate creep — all those ads! all those corporate sponsorships! — but for hundreds of millions of viewers around the world, it’s still good, old-fashioned communal fun. For two weeks, every four years, everyone becomes an expert in the luge.
The Olympics is one of those increasingly rare sporting events, like the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup, that crosses gender lines. More so even than the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup, the Olympics is an event that draws both fans of Glee and anyone who watches Coach’s Corner.
Event organizers have kept details of the opening ceremony under wraps — another Olympic tradition — but the broad strokes are well known: The ceremony will be a celebration of Russia and Russian culture, and will focus on the arts Russia is best known for: ballet, classical composition and choral works. The opening ceremony is believed to include six train locomotives — shades of Doctor Zhivago — along with complete buildings and a network of bridges.
Once again, the old debate of live-vs.-tape will jump to the fore. CBC is showing all key events, including the opening ceremony, live, regardless of the time — and regardless of how many people may happen to be working for a living at the time. CBC will repeat key moments at midday, and again in the evening, in prime time. NBC, on the other hand, will show events exclusively in prime time, giving producers time to craft the nightly fourhour broadcast into slickly edited entertainment packages, with a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. It’s a fundamental difference in philosophy. CBC assumes you care enough about who wins the luge, so much so that you have to know right now. NBC assumes that if you really care who wins the luge, you’ll find out about it on Twitter; most people just want to sit back in the evening after a long day and go on an emotional ride.
NBC’s coverage is unabashedly pro-American, and calculated to build up to a flag-waving, emotional payoff at the end.
CBC’s coverage is unabashedly pro-Canadian, so much so that gold medal winners from other countries are routinely overlooked in the rush to focus on the Canadian who finished in the middle of the pack. Once again, Peter Mansbridge and Ron MacLean will host CBC’s coverage of the opening ceremony, giving Mansbridge an opportunity to both show off his grasp of world affairs and to bring some gravitas and knowledge beyond who’s expected to win medals. ■ The late-night talk show wars continue, even with the Olympics now in full swing. Andy Samberg and the Muppets join Jimmy Fallon for his final turn as host of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Fallon takes over The Tonight Show mid-Olympics, on Feb. 17. (CTV/NBC) ■ Tom Lennon, Lt. Jim Dangle from Reno 911, joins Craig Ferguson for some improv and impromptu laughs on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, alongside 28 Weeks Later’s Imogen Poots. (Omni/CBS)