CBC's audiences for its first three days of Olympic
coverage "have ranged from" 1.521 to 1.591 million viewers,
according to Rob Brodie of the OTTAWA SUN, who notes those
numbers are down from the 1.8 million viewers for the first
few days of the '98 Nagano Games. But the network "should
be most encouraged" by other numbers, as 911,000 tuned in
for 9:00-11:00am ET coverage on Sunday and 956,000 tuned in
for the 11:00pm-3:00am ET coverage on Saturday (OTTAWA SUN,
9/20). The CBC is "sticking" to the Canadian Radio-TV
Telecom Commissioner's maximum commercial time per hour,
which is 12 minutes. In Toronto, William Houston: "So far,
there's been no evidence of the CBC's ad content interfering
with an important live event, but the heavy load is often
irritating" (Toronto GLOBE & MAIL, 9/20).
ABC LIKES THIS ANGLE: During last night's "World News
Tonight," ABC's Peter Jennings said, "As most of the country
knows by now, we will not see any of [the Olympic events] on
television for many, many hours after the competition. This
has caused some consternation among fans who favor
immediacy." ABC's Bob Jamieson noted that CBC's live
coverage "has led to frustrated fans and a growing number of
American sports bars showing [CBC's] coverage." Project
Excellence in Journalism's Tom Rosensteil: "The real
question here is, people have a choice: do they want to make
the Olympics real when they happen ... or do they want to
make them real as an experience when they're watching them?"
Jennings: "You can also get the latest results from the
Olympics at ABCNews.com. They also have a tremendous amount
of information about the athletes" (ABC, 9/19).
A WISE GUY, HEY? CBS' Bryant Gumbel said on "The Early
Show" this morning, "In Sydney, the fifth day of Olympic
competition is coming to a close. Of course you won't get to
see that for several tape-delayed hours" (CBS, 9/20).
CNN/SI's Fred Hickman, on why he gets his Olympic news off
CNNSI.com: "While I'm figuring out which taped-delayed event
to miss, I want to know [the news]. I want to know all
about the nations participating that'll never be shown on
those tape-delayed broadcasts but should be" (CNN/SI, 9/19).
