History Of The Role TV Played

Photo Credit Ali Garner FB

Thanks to everyone who has mentioned that they are impressed with the two articles that Roland sent over, TV has changed the way we watch and expect TV to get various angles, interviews and behind the scene story lines.

It’s been quite the ride reading about the history and I hope you have enjoyed the ride to never, never land.

Part Three:

The USA won 3 Gold medals again but this time it was Dorothy Hamill who caused a sensation and ABC’s ratings were higher than expected with Dorothy on ice and Franz Krammer on the slopes.

It seemed that boycotting the Olympics was becoming a thing and the 1976 Summer Olympic Games in Montreal was no exception. 

Twenty-nine countries, mostly African, boycotted the Montreal Games when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) refused to ban New Zealand, after the New Zealand national rugby union team had toured South Africa earlier in 1976 in defiance of the United Nations’ calls for a sporting embargo due to their racist apartheid policies. 

In all aspects the boycott went unheeded by the bigger nations, and Canada’s first Olympic Games carried on. 

The 1976 Montreal summer Olympics, which initially had a $300 million budget, ended up with a staggering $1.5 billion deficit, mainly due to poor planning and corruption. 

It saddled that Canadian city and Province with a debt that was not paid off until 2006. 

On the television side of things,  ABC had the rights for $25 million and finally a broadcasting window favorable to the U.S. market and the key east coast time zone. 

Prime Time at the Olympics would be Prime Time on the East coast. ABC produced 76.5 hours of coverage. 

By Comparison Canadian Coverage by the CBC amounted to 169 hours. Many Americans along the Canadian Border were able to watch more live coverage from the CBC  than being offered by ABC. 

Suddenly television competition in real time allowed for some American viewers to find out the results before they were broadcast by ABC. Certainly a harbinger of things to come. 

On the frontlines of security, Munich was ever present in everyone’s mind and Canada was the first to use acoustic surveillance in the Athletes Village and installed CCTV cameras everywhere. The games were a success but not for everyone and soon 

Olympic legacies would become Olympic sized headaches for those cities reaching for the golden ticket.