Winter Olympic Flames and Other Observations from the Passing Parade - Simon Applebaum - MediaBizBloggers

Are you ready for some figure skating, curling or downhill skiing? NBC hopes the American public answers with a resounding affirmative, less than two weeks away from the Winter Olympics in Vancouver temporarily taking over the network's primetime and late-night schedule. In the wake of The Jay Leno Show, then the Leno/Conan O'Brien debacle, NBC needs a ratings blast quick. The question on many minds is whether the Vancouver games will provide it.

In NBC's favor: substantial live coverage of figure skating and other key events, always a trigger to higher Olympic audiences. Also, the network's promotional messages, the best in recent memory with specific athletes speaking out, are running all over its lineup, more so than in recent memory.

In NBC's disfavor: atrocious marketing, promotion and public relations efforts everywhere but on NBC – nothing much on NBC Universal-owned cable networks, nothing at all on the local avails of cable and satellite operators, no pre-Games press conferences or conference calls giving reporters (such as yours truly) access to NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol, his lieutenants in charge of Olympics coverage or on-air talent. Meantime, little or no use of outdoor advertising to promote the games. With all the urgency to get an audience, why aren't there billboards, bus/subway posters and other modes of outdoor ads highlighting coverage all over this nation?

One important point: don't expect CBS, Fox or ABC to drop first-run content while NBC runs the Olympics. Four years ago in Turin, Italy, TV history was made when for the first time, other programs – original episodes of CSI, Survivorand Dancing With The Stars– beat Olympics coverage head-to-head. Even the umpteenth repeat of High School Musicalon Disney Channel picked up more than four million viewers against figure skating from Turin. Be sure that result is very fresh to those networks, as well as top cable channels.

Before you turn negative on Vancouver, let's throw in a counterpoint: Before the Beijing Olympics of mid-2008, it looked like NBC was on course to screw up, again because of its marketing/promotion/PR attitude similar to what's happening here. Then some magic happened, in the form of an extraordinary opening ceremony that blew away viewers and provoked extraordinary word-of-mouth for the two weeks of competition to follow. And Ebersol worked magic with China Olympics organizers to get swimming and gymnastics events carried live in the Eastern/Central U.S. time zones, clearing the way for swimmer Michael Phelps' historic gold-medal glory road to unfold live before viewers. Put the two together, and NBC caught lightening for the best Olympic TV ratings in years.

You also can make the argument that NBC's coverage – play-by-play, camerawork and graphics – now stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best ABC Sports offered in its grand Olympics run.

Right now, you sense that unless an athlete or two captures our attention in a big way, NBC will have a rough slalom in Vancouver. But don't discount the magic factor. Just don't.

**One sure conclusion: for the fourth straight Olympics, sister NBC Universal-owned channel Telemundo gets the short end of the stick, and its Spanish-language viewers the shorter end. After confining most of its 2008 Beijing coverage to 2-6 a.m. time periods, causing extreme sleep makeovers with viewers, the network (as of this writing) is not offering any live coverage of Vancouver whatsoever. This is an inexcusable affront to Latinos and people who prefer to watch Olympics action in Spanish, who more than deserve to watch it at the same time offered by NBC or its cable networks. It's way past time for someone high-up at NBC Universal to do something about this. And when the next Olympics TV rights package is awarded (beyond London 2012), Spanish-language U.S. primetime and daytime coverage must be a must.

**If you still don't believe we have an interactive TV mass marketplace in formation, or that Verizon and AT&T aren't serious over making ITV the viewing differentiator in their respective cable overbuild ventures, then catch FiOS TV's latest TV ad running in New York and elsewhere. The ad spotlights FiOS' Facebook and Twitter applications on the TV set. You saw right--Facebook and Twitter, the powerhouses of social media. This may be the first ad of its kind running anywhere. In less than a year with FiOS, Facebook and Twitter have gone from new interactive applications to big draw for catching new multichannel service customers.

**I wonder what kind of attention these applications, and more of that vein sure to follow, will draw during the second annual Social Media Week, taking place in New York and other cities worldwide this week. Organizers have 70 events planned for New York alone, including a Sony-led 3D demo and Mark Cuban advocating ITV at the annual OnMedia conference.

**Happy original programming days are back among the pay cable networks. HBO and Showtime have promising new series debuting this year, side-by-side with the best originals they've created in the last year or two (True Bloodand Hungfor HBO and Nurse Jackieand United States of Taraat Showtime). Spartacus: Blood and Sandis opening the Chris Albrecht-led era at Starz in nice fashion, and newcomer Epix, starting to pick up key cable operator distribution, has Nashville music scene drama Tough Tradein its hopper. Also, kudos to HBO, Showtime and Epix for joining more than 30 other broadcast/cable networks in running Hope For Haiti Now, the earthquake relief special which has raised more than $70 million for Unicef, the Red Cross and other agencies in action for Haiti citizens.

Until the next time, stay well and stay tuned.

Simon Applebaum is host/producer of Tomorrow Will Be Televised, the Internet-distributed radio program covering the TV scene. The program runs live Mondays/most Fridays at 3 p.m. Eastern time/noon, Pacific time over BlogTalk Radio (www.blogtalkradio.com). Episode replays are available at www.blogtalkradio.com/simonapple04, or on podcast, downloadable to any major mobile device from 14 Web download portals, arranged by www.sonibyte.com. Have a question or comment? E-mail through simonapple04@yahoo.com

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