Why the Olympics are No Big Deal - August 17, 2007
I’ll give you one word and four letters why The Olympics Are No Big Deal … Cable and ESPN. Cable television and ESPN, before the age of satellite TV, was so hungry to fill its time that it took sporting events that used to only be seen every once in awhile and turned them into everyday occurrence.
Let’s face it, you used to only see Olympic-type sporting events, well, at the Olympics. But now, in an effort to fill 24 hour sports programming, it’s on all the time. Not to mention, Americans interest level in Olympic sports cannot be supported fulltime; once every two to four years yes, everyday, no.
Combine the 24 hour sports coverage with time delays and network television’s desire to take what happened yesterday in Japan and run it tonight in primetime and you pretty much have a non-event. Sure, the networks come up with a pretty good human interest story once in awhile. But they try and make every athlete a human interest story. I mean if the athlete was that interesting, wouldn’t we have heard about them on one of the other 162 channels by now?