You and the Olympics

Bad news for you (and for all of us, really). CBC lost the Canadian TV rights starting with Vancouver to CTV, which isn't readily available in the U.S. like CBC is.

 

I've heard the Times is sending a dozen throughout the newsroom, and Portland 1 or 2.

 

I'm not sure what the circulation of the Colorado Springs paper is, but if I'm not mistaken, it's about a third of what it was 10 years ago.

 

It was kind of weird in 1992 watching the Barcelona Olympics live on European TV, then seeing a lot of the same stuff taped (but broadcast live via NBC) on AFN six hours later with all the treacly garbage mixed in. That's what turned me off of U.S. TV coverage.

Beijing was better, but the damage was done.

 

Unless a city is one that lobbied to be an Olympics host and residents there are curious how that's working out for a fellow U.S. or North American city, my hunch is that readers find a faraway, exotic locale more interesting for an Olympics than some place like SLC or even Vancouver.

Just because something is easy for U.S. journalists to get to doesn't make it more coverage-worthy. And the differences in airfares is always just a small part of the expense of covering an Olympics. (The time required to go to and return from someplace farther? Hell, you just make your people eat those hours as part of going.)

 

I agree with Joe. Exoticism is part of the appeal of the Olympics. That's why I wish I could have done Beijing, and wish I hadn't done Atlanta.
Look, let's not pretend papers are doing this for any other reason than money. They no longer care what is or isn't available to readers -- on any subject. The AJC skipped the Super Bowl, because no one cares about football in Georgia.
People have their faults, but they're not fools. When you leave something out of the paper, they know why, and some of them decide they can do without this increasingly shoddy product.