Skating Figures as Focal Point of CBS’ Winter Games Coverage

In January of 1984, a month before it would televise the Winter Olympics at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, ABC agreed to pay $309 million for rights to the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary, Canada.

The deal, made in Lausanne, Switzerland, left a sour taste in the mouths of Roone Arledge and other ABC executives.

They believed they had been had. The bidding was turned into an open auction by Barry Frank, acting as a consultant to the International Olympic Committee, and it pushed the price higher than anyone believed possible.

The $309 million was three times greater than the $91.5 million ABC had paid for the Sarajevo Winter Games.

Donna de Varona, who was then Arledge’s assistant, recalls that Frank had ABC over a barrel.

“Roone was very big on motivating the troops, and losing out on the Calgary Olympics one month before the Sarajevo Olympics would have killed morale,” De Varona said. “Frank knew he could take Roone to the wall.”

Frank got his price, but the Calgary Winter Games would be the last Olympics televised by ABC.

By agreeing to pay so much, ABC took itself out of the bidding for the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul, Korea, which went to NBC for $400 million.

De Varona recalls that Arledge told IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch that, at these prices, there was no way one network could televise two Games in the same year, as ABC had done during the years it billed itself as “the network of the Olympics.”

If Arledge was right, one network would always be automatically eliminated from the bidding.

There was a solution, however. Arledge suggested that the IOC stagger the Winter and Summer Olympics, holding one every two years instead of both every four years.

The IOC, normally a slow-moving, cautious group, acted quickly.

Meeting at Lausanne in October 1986, the IOC, prompted by Samaranch and its 11-member executive board, broke a 70-year-old tradition and rather quietly and without much fanfare agreed to stage a Winter Games in 1994 and continue thereafter at four-year intervals.

So now CBS, only two years after televising the Winter Olympics at Albertville, France, will be televising another.

Only last month, CBS also won the rights to the 1998 Winter Games at Nagano, Japan, with a bid of $375 million, which was $80 million more than the rights fee for this month’s Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway.

CBS has lost the NBA, major league baseball and the NFL, but now it can bill itself as “the network of the Winter Olympics.”

“We feel that we have the experience and the confidence in our production and sales staffs to do the Winter Olympics better than anyone,” said Neal Pilson, president of CBS Sports.

“NBC knows the Summer Olympics, and that gives them an advantage there.”

And the new setup--an Olympics every two years--is good for everyone in television.

“There are only positives,” said Mark Harrington, CBS’ vice president in charge of Olympic coverage.

Mike Klatt, coordinating producer of TNT’s coverage, echoed that sentiment.

The big pluses are (1) it spreads out sales, meaning sponsors aren’t asked to support two Olympics in one year; and (2) it spreads out promotional aspects.

It would seem also to be a plus for viewers. They no longer will have a four-year wait for an Olympic competition.

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CBS will devote 120 hours to the Lillehammer Winter Games, with 50 hours in prime time.

TNT will add 45 hours of supplemental weekday coverage of the event, which opens next Saturday and runs through Feb. 27.

CBS generally will have three blocks of coverage, with a fourth added on some weekend days.

Weekdays, coverage will run 7 to 9 a.m., 8 to 11 p.m. and 12:37 to 1:37 a.m.

TNT’s weekday coverage will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

With Lillehammer nine hours ahead of the West Coast, almost all of CBS’ programming will be tape-delayed. Some of TNT’s will be live.

Greg Gumbel will be the host of CBS’ prime-time coverage, replacing Tim McCarver and Paula Zahn, who split that chore at Albertville in 1992.

Rick Gentile, CBS’ senior vice president of production, admits that the “fit wasn’t right” with McCarver and Zahn.

Of Gumbel, he said, “He’s an easy look and listen, a good traffic cop, personable and a good story teller.”

Oversimplifying it, Gumbel said, “My job is to make sure I don’t make people throw up.”

He added: “I’m no genius. If it was up to me, I’d mount the goalie on the goalie-cam (rather than the other way around).”

Gumbel’s younger brother, Bryant, was the prime-time host for NBC at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Similarities between Greg and Bryant are only coincidental. If Bryant is three-piece suits, Greg is jeans and a T-shirt.

But don’t bad-mouth Bryant to Greg. “One time someone came up to me and said: ‘You’re not the jerk your brother is,’ ” Greg said. “My response was, ‘Have you ever met my brother?’ He said he hadn’t, so I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.”

Gumbel co-anchored the weekend morning broadcasts from Albertville in ’92.

Zahn returns for the Lillehammer Games. She and Harry Smith will co-anchor the weekday morning telecasts; Andrea Joyce and Jim Nantz will handle the weekend daytime slots and Pat O’Brien will again be host of the late-night shows.

Hosts for TNT include John Nabor, Nick Charles and Fred Hickman.

Executives of CBS and TNT will meet each weekday to decide which network gets what. CBS has priority.

TNT’s Klatt said his network will devote considerable time to hockey, with a complete or almost-complete game each day.

Figure skating figures to be CBS’ big sport.