CBS Primed to Use Olympics for Run at Winner’s Circle

NEW YORK — Coming off its best ratings sweeps period in three years, CBS already is looking forward to the next one in February.

That’s because the network has sold nearly $550 million worth of commercials for the Winter Olympic Games, which it will broadcast from Nagano, Japan, Feb. 6-22. CBS expects the audience tune-in to further boost its run on defending ratings champion NBC.

“The Winter Olympics will be a great promotional platform for promoting our shows and continuing the momentum from the fall,” says Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports.

For viewers, the 1998 Games offer an unusual opportunity: seeing some major events live in prime time. CBS, which paid $375 million for the U.S. telecast rights, is planning to take advantage of the 14-hour time difference between the United States and Japan to broadcast live the opening ceremonies, men’s ice hockey and men’s and women’s downhill skiing. Other events also may be carried live at night.

“This will be the first time that Olympic downhill skiing will be seen live in prime time,” said Rick Gentile, executive producer of CBS’ coverage. “It’s hard to predict weather and other factors ahead, but we’re going to try to carry a number of events live, or with a very quick turnaround.”

Ironically, carrying events live doesn’t necessarily pay off in the ratings. As CBS prepared to cover the 1992 Winter Olympics, producers who pored over ABC’s ratings for the 1988 Winter Games found that the network had been hurt by carrying hours of hockey live in prime time--an event not popular with female viewers. So CBS “packaged” events on videotape, loading the evening hours with figure skating and other sports said to appeal to the predominately female prime-time Olympics audience.

NBC took that philosophy to new highs--or lows, depending on your preference--with the 1996 Summer Olympics from Atlanta, earning strong criticism for airing tape-delayed events without telling viewers. But NBC did well in the ratings and racked up huge profits.

“I don’t know if it will make a difference in the ratings if we carry events live,” Gentile acknowledged. “I’d like to think that it will be an attraction to see a ‘sexy’ event like downhill skiing live in prime time. Since we can carry skiing that way, I assume viewers would be angry if we didn’t do so.”

CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman” had announced that it would broadcast from Japan for one week of the Olympics. But the producers later changed their minds, saying they could get as much creative mileage out of having their own Olympics “correspondents” on site for two weeks while they and Letterman stayed home in New York.

Luge jokes, they reasoned, don’t have to be delivered from Japan to be funny.