Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
A TV producer named Ebersol has developed Olympic-themed television programming for the run-up to the Summer Olympics.
Not Dick Ebersol, the former NBC Sports chairman who is a giant of Olympic broadcasting. Rather, it’s Dick’s son Charlie who watched as his father produced almost all of the Olympic Games from 1992 in Barcelona through 2010 in Vancouver for NBC.
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EBERSOL
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Charlie Ebersol created a series for Lifetime called “Gold Medal Families” that focuses on how the families of Olympic hopefuls prepare for the Olympic trials and possibly the Rio Games. The eight-part series debuts June 28 and runs on the network for four consecutive Tuesdays.
“One of the things my dad has always wanted to do was delve much deeper into the families and tell their bigger story,” Ebersol said. “The opportunity to actually do that as a television show and fulfill something that was an unscratched itch for my dad certainly played somewhere in the back of my mind as we came up with the idea for this series.”
Ebersol pitched the show to Lifetime last summer. He said Olympic rights holder NBC was supportive of selling the series to a non-NBC-owned channel, as network executives view the series as a chance to market the Olympics to Lifetime’s primarily female audience.
“I understand why doing this for NBC would make the most sense to the outside world,” Ebersol said. “But Lifetime’s audience is the audience that’s going to tune in and watch the Olympics. The thing that my father tapped into was that if you make this storytelling something that relates to who’s getting up on the podium, they will show up in droves during the Games. Lifetime offers that opportunity.”
Ebersol said he got the idea for the series around 2007, after he and his younger brother Willie directed a documentary on Winter Olympic athlete Shaun White called “Don’t Look Down.” The two spent a year with White and got to know his family well.
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Aly Raisman is among the athletes featured.
Photo by: LIFETIME |
“We heard the stories about what Shaun’s mom had gone through to help Shaun,” Ebersol said. “Coincidentally, we also were spending time with Michael Phelps’ mother and Apolo Ohno’s father. There was a real commonality in those stories despite the fact that they had three wildly different back stories. A lot of that was about sacrifice.”
The series follows athletes like 17-year-old diver Jordan Windle, who was adopted from Cambodia and raised by two dads. There’s also 16-year-old Nastasya Generalova, the daughter of a single mother who is trying to become one of the first minorities to make the U.S. rhythmic gymnastics team.
Other athletes who will be part of the series include 21-year-old gymnast Aly Raisman, 19-year-old diver Steele Johnson, 19-year-old boxer Jajaira Gonzalez and 16-year-old swimmer Sean Grieshop.
“We’re not short on grand stories,” Ebersol said. “We wanted a diverse group. These families all have the same clear goal. But how they get there is wildly diverse.”
Ebersol’s production company, The Company, is producing the series. Ebersol, Mike Lanigan and Bryn Freedman are executive producers.
— John Ourand
