USOC exploring its own 24-hour television network

USOC exploring its own 24-hour television network{mosimage}If the plan works, sports fans will soon have another 24-hour network at their disposal: Olympic TV.

The United States Olympic Committee is considering starting its own network, filled with live events, archival footage and maybe a cooking show or two.

The working title, the United States Olympic Sports Network, is an idea that has been discussed for the last decade. Now the USOC is getting serious.

Among the goals for the network would be to make money and to increase exposure for Olympic sports, many of which are forgotten as soon as the Games end.

There is a chance that increased exposure through a single network could make the Olympics a more valuable commodity when the negotiations for future network television contracts come up. It would help national governing bodies of individual sports, many of which struggle to find an audience.

“We think by aggregating it under one channel, we’ll have a more cost-effective way for them to air their sports,” Jim Scherr, the USOC chief executive, said. “That gives them a greater ability to build an audience.”

Modern pentathlon and taekwondo fans may be thrilled. But while there may not be that huge of an audience for many of these niche sports, the USOC knows that more than 10 million Americans are either members of a national governing body of an Olympic sport or a parent of someone who is a member.

“We know that not every event will get stellar ratings,” said Steve Roush, the USOC’s chief of sport performance. “You might take some bruises here and there, but overall, it’s viable.”

Just how viable is up for debate in a fragmented television world in which the goal for any fledgling network is finding cable and satellite systems to distribute the channel. For a price, all channels can find a home, and the USOC has great name recognition and branding going for it, which could help if the channel is available in enough homes.

“It would be almost like the World Cup channel,” said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. “Once every few years, you’re the channel. In between, there’s some stuff that goes on, but I don’t know if it’s enough to sustain something like that.

“It’s not a completely harebrained scheme, but the reality is, it’s rough to start a new channel.”

The stakes are high for the USOC, high enough that many inside the offices might wish they had gotten into the television business earlier.

The time-zone difference, the Internet and the absence and struggles of American stars — most notably Michelle Kwan and Bode Miller — all contributed to low ratings for NBC’s airing of this year’s Winter Games in Torino, Italy.

The ratings for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens were better than for the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia, but nothing like the old days.

The ratings slump will factor into negotiations for television rights for the 2014 Games and beyond. The USOC gets about 33 percent of its operating budget for each four-year cycle from Olympic television money. Keeping the value high is a huge priority, and generating ratings for 2008, 2010 and 2012 would benefit the Olympic movement.

“I’m very confident the next three Olympic Games will generate more than acceptable TV ratings,” said Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports who consults with the International Olympic Committee on its television deals.

A new television network would give the USOC a marketing platform to sell content through the Internet — updates, highlights and even live feeds of events. And if cable and satellite distribution is a problem, the USOC conceivably could offer the network through the Internet.

What kind of programming would be on the network? Though he sees many Olympic trials and national championships possibly being aired, Scherr envisions the biggest events for the biggest sports on network television.

There could be lifestyle and cooking shows, interview shows, instructional shows, magazine shows, telecasts of championships and events from other countries. And there is also abundant amounts of archival footage.

“It’d be cool, for two weeks one year, if they played the entire ABC coverage of the 1972 Munich Olympics, played it just like they televised it when it happened,” Thompson said. “That’s a fairly specialized audience, but it’s a good product, too.”

Thompson recalled the Olympic coverage in the 1970s and early 1980s, when ABC brought sports broadcasting to a new level.

“Back then, we televised the Olympics better than the Egyptians built pyramids,” he said.

Since then, the in-depth, personalized athlete features have become a cliché, great camera work has become common and sports on television is a way of life.

Scherr said: “We’re taking the challenge for any marketer or TV entity, which is to find a way to get fragmented audiences that exist today and get them together. We think there is a viable way to do that for Olympic sports.”

— The Associated Press