Howcroft: Beautiful athletes and lack of brand hoardings makes Olympics spectacular
Great casting and a lack of intrusive branding at the sports venues makes the Olympics more of a visual feast than other sports, argues Russel Howcroft.
Casting….it’s pretty important in the television game, which is why it was interesting to read a tweet by Virginia Trioli regarding how good looking Winter Olympians are. They do make for some very attractive television.
Russian women’s curling captain Anna Sidorova in promotional shots before the Games
One night recently we found ourselves transfixed by the women’s curling. Yes, the curling. Wiki gave us the details on the game’s intricacies, which helped, but it was the casting which had us all engaged, in particular, the Russian curling team.
We wondered if casting played a role in team selection. After all, the Olympics are about television and it was the casting which kept us in engaged in a game where you slide rocks down an icy track. If this was the case, it was smart, as two hours later we were all experts and thoroughly enjoying the skills and tactics employed. I am booking a game of curling at the Icehouse in Melbourne when we return.
At Sochi we have seen a number of events, everything from downhill, to slopestyle, to short course ice racing. They are exciting to see and, on occasion, the atmosphere is charged and passionate. But I do think the Winter Games are a super television event. The production values are superior, with the lighting of the evening program, for example, making the vision all the more spectacular.
The lack of perimeter signage and overt sponsor presence (like the NFL does in their competition) makes for a wonderfully clean look and it allows the organisers, due to the removal of on-site sponsor livery, to art direct the stage for each of the events. (Doesn’t the Super Bowl look beautiful every year?)
There are no sponsor hoardings at Olympic sites
A simple orange for skiing, blue for skating, purple for biathlon, and so on. These simple design elements, on the white background of the Sochi snow, made for beautiful television shots. And this is great for the global broadcasters as it only enhances the value of the advertising within program, this being the only way to expose your brand.
We have all heard stories about how manic the IOC are about sponsors branding their involvement, guerrilla marketing and the sacrosanct nature of the Olympic brand. Having seen first hand how they do it, it is an incredible example of power branding and the maintenance of that power via keeping the door shut and having the balls to simply say “No”.
Russel Howcroft is executive general manager for Winter Olympic broadcaster Network Ten
I thought the Olympics were about the spirit of competition and Athletes striving to be the best, not Television. Last time I check Curling wasn’t a bikini-clad sport, although I’m sure the selection committee of all countries choose the best looking people for their team over those with talent and ability – pfft. The Olympics aren’t channel 10, Rusty.
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Just – REALLY!!!!
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Russel…..think about what you said….”Wiki gave us the details…”….
Why the hell didn’t TEN “give us the details”?
This is a major problem with the whole coverage…pretty pictures and absolutely NO explanation of the various sports and how they are played and scored…….
Russel do you really understand television?
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The coverage of the games is lack-luster to say the least. There’s very little coverage of team events such as Ice Hockey (presumably because Australia is not in it) and the camera work during events like the Half Pipe finals is ridiculous, keep the subject in the frame for gods-sake! Understand 10 are just getting the feed, but c’mon. And get some presenters that know something about the sport they are commentating, please!
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Hi Russel, avid C10 Olympics viewer here. Just wondering if you guys feel you guys have really dropped the ball with your Sochi 2014 coverage? Because I do. Running delayed coverage of events completely kills the second screen experience as you find out the results when trying to find out more about the event, how it’s scored or the participants. You should spend some time understanding how young people actually consume content in 2014. Heck, if you guys spend some time looking around the internet, you’ll find most Australian sports forums have links to where people are watching BBC and NBC coverage of the Olympics because the C10/1HD coverage is so poor, delayed and loaded with inane mini-documentaries to try and force an emotional connection. Oh and when things are really live, there have been the tmes they’ve pulled away from the live coverage of an event and gone to the studio/commercials once an Australian is done, so bad luck if you were interested in seeing how it finished. Plus your app has constant issues with audio feeds not working (as all the of complaints on iTunes should help point out). Just some food for thought, really.
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While a clean event I agree might look better from a event presentation perspective few bar the IOC and NFL have the luxury of that choice. If Russell is so in love with the Olympic model and the ‘clean’ nature of them I look forward TEN picking up the rights for the Summer Olympics which are still in the market because they are becoming increasingly difficult to monetise.
Oh and by they way billing every Australian athlete as a Gold Medal chance is only further evidence of you lack of any real understanding into the Winter Games. We had three genuine chances and they won a Silver and Bronze between.
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Yes the app has some quirky things in it. But so does the Ten Play sochi web site. It has a schedule, where you show what is on each of your channels (including the 6 channels you only broadcast on the net), but you can’t click on the channel logo or on the event and switch to playing it. You have to first go to Watch Live before you can play the channel. Then the quality is bad, really bad. Try to play it on your HD computer screen… (1080p), even your logo almost looks like an 8 bits version (blocks).
And then the switching of the sports on One and Ten.. was watching speed skating and there was break (cleaning of the ice) and another sport was shown, but then you never went back to the speed skating, even do the event has not finished.
Playing events saying it is LIVE but then looking on your online channel or the sochi2014.com web site and it has already finished.
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Russell, I’m afraid the ultimate jolly isn’t translating too well to tv for 10.
Steve Quartermaine just looks confused as if desperately waiting for the AFL section of the winter games to start. The two goofy guys at the halfpipe just smile and repeat each other replacing Torah with Chumpy as suits. I appreciate winter sports isn’t Channel Ten’s main game, but your ‘experts’ have been poor and offered no serious analysis and despite some other great performances seem to have been briefed to only speak about 3 athletes (repeat after me torah, chumpy, lydia).
Next time I’d say share the rights with Foxtel, let them do their 8 channel in full thing and you just produce a kickarse nightly primetime highlights show.
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CH10’s Winter Olympics coverage has been poor, the studio performances laughable and the obsession with 3rd rate Aussie athletes a huge miscalculation. We love to see Australians doing well, but this is a Global event 10. If you want to be taken seriously, treat it as one.
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Good luck if you want to watch something other than events that Aussies are in.
The coverage in my opinion has been laughable. No really laughable!
I’m all for supporting our winter athletes but how many times can someone watch the same Torah Time (gag) and Chumpy Pullin promos in one night! the only saving grace was Alyssa in my view. How about we focus on all our athletes not just the good looking ones…
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while i agree with many comments so far I’ll just add a couple of minor ones in 10’s favour. First, they are absolutely no more one-eyed for Aussies than anything 7 or 9 produce in any sport – and I was in UK for 2012 summer Olympics and sadly the BBC now takes gold for sycophantic parochialism. Secondly, given about a year ago she was self-consciously grabbing A-League sideliners going in to half time, I think Mel McLaughlin has matured immeasurably as a TV presenter so well done for spotting her potential.
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Less branding at the event = expensive adverts, and lots of them. I bet he’s happy…..
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A. Russel, good to see you are learning something when you are over there.
B. Too bad, the lessons for you revolve around advertising and not broadcasting
Some feedback on the coverage:
1. You seemed to work out your two channel strategy along the way, but it did evolve. Early on, you had no idea what you were showing on each channel and why, your presenters had no idea, nobody in your production team seemed to have a clue and us in audience land could see.
2. As it evolved, then yes, we worked it out. Ch One overnight was live action, and in full where possible. Ch Ten was packaged for Entertainment. The problem arose when there was no co-ordination. A sports fan would watch live action in the evening on One, then you had no more live action, so you would show replays on One. When we changed to Ten, it was doing a delayed package of what we just watched on One.
3. The reverse also happened with your team regularly giving away scores on things some people may watch later on the other channel. Sometimes your dumb commentators would say we wont give the score away then present a video highlight with the score given away in the top left cnr!
4. Sport is more than pictures. It is also about competition, standings, results. Despite pt 3, your electronic scoreboards showing standings and times to get, times got etc were woeful. It was a luxury to have a split time up for 3 seconds. Most were less. Many things were not shown, and those that did were for a glance.
5. Commentators. And your commentators werent much help. Some were great (Camplin, Lee, a few others). But some were awful. I hope I never have to hear about the Bobsligh guy who took ten years to love the sport again. I must have heard that story ten times, all from the same commentator. Boring!!!
That will do, hope that helps with your future go at this next time.
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