Practiced Eye Gives CBS Team Confidence

CBS just got a shot in the arm by reacquiring the NFL. Now what it might need is a whack on the knee.

It might have been the notoriety from the whack on the knee Nancy Kerrigan got from Tonya Harding’s clan that resulted in the record ratings CBS got for its Winter Olympics coverage from Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994.

The prime-time average rating was a 27.8, the highest for any Olympics, summer or winter.

The 1996 Summer Olympics at Atlanta on NBC averaged a 21.6, and the previous high for a Winter Olympics was a 23.6 on ABC in 1980, when the United States had its stunning gold-medal run in hockey at Lake Placid, N.Y.

CBS has guaranteed advertisers a 19.7 prime-time average from Nagano, Japan.

CBS has sold about $610 million worth of advertising for its 128 hours of coverage over the 17 days of the Nagano Winter Olympics, plus the 50 hours on TNT. CBS gets that revenue too.

TNT also chipped in a hefty rights fee to CBS for the privilege of offering mostly weekday afternoon coverage to its cable affiliates.

Industry experts are estimating that CBS’ profits for its Nagano coverage may approach $100 million, which would offset the $100 million some figure it will lose on the NFL’s AFC package later this year.

But viewers couldn’t care less about profits and losses. What they want is good coverage.

With two Winter Olympics under its belt and plenty of high-tech innovations, CBS goes into these Games confident.

CBS also televised the 1992 Winter Games from Albertville, France, and then, under the new Olympic rotation in which the Winter Olympics fall in between the Summer Games, did the Lillehammer Games only two years later.

This will be CBS’ final Winter Olympics for at least a decade, since NBC has all Summer and Winter Olympics locked up through 2008. CBS would like to go out on a strong note.

CBS is counting heavily on Jim Nantz, its prime-time host. He gets help from Dan Rather on the Opening Ceremony, then he’s on his own, although Bryant Gumbel will be around the second week to provide special reports.

Greg Gumbel, Bryant’s brother, was the prime-time host from Lillehammer, and that worked considerably better than when Tim McCarver and Paula Zahn were co-hosts from Albertville.

“With one host, it’s light-years easier, and I think better,” Rick Gentile, CBS’ executive producer of Olympic coverage, said just before departing for Nagano for a final time.

“When dealing with co-hosts, you’re dealing with two parts, and that makes it difficult on everyone. It also makes it harder to ad-lib.”

Still, the rest of the time slots will be anchored by co-hosts. Al Trautwig, a late add after Pat O’Brien moved on to other endeavors, and Michele Tafoya will handle late-night coverage. Andrea Joyce and Bill Macatee get the weekend daytime coverage.

The weekend days will provide CBS with just about the only opportunities for live coverage, since Nagano is 14 hours ahead of New York and 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles.

The results of the figure skating--the marquee event--will sometimes be known early in the morning here but not shown by CBS until that night.

Some of the hockey may be live--or at least live in the East--on CBS News’ “This Morning,” with Mark McEwen and Jane Robelot.

CBS in Nagano will have an advantage NBC did not enjoy in Atlanta.

There are fewer sports to cover with a Winter Olympics, and the U.S. public, as a whole, is not clamoring to see every minute of every sport. CBS will be able to get away with a soft approach, because if it misses a little curling, there will be no outcry like there was when NBC ignored such sports as soccer, softball and boxing in Atlanta.

Covering an Olympics, in Gentile’s view, is “really about covering the drama. In this particular case, in Japan, it’s about covering the culture, the people, the land.

“Nobody’s ever been to Nagano,” he said. “Nobody’s ever heard of Nagano in this country. Something we’ve done well in the past and hope to do again is bring the American viewer to this incredibly exotic place.”

But the competition, of course, will dominate. CBS has been gearing up ever since Lillehammer.

“We have these researchers who do an absolutely incredible job,” said Joyce, the weekend co-host. “We have nine big binders of material, and Bill and I, along with the other hosts, have regular conference calls with them every week.”

The research unit, headed by Glen Caro and also including Ezra Edelman, Elliot Kirschner and Joe Perskie, has put together more than 3,000 pages of information.

“These guys are incredible,” Macatee said. “I don’t think they sleep.”

They have visited more than 17 countries, compiled more than 1,500 biographies and continually collect results of winter sports from around the world.

The research unit is just one facet of CBS’ preparation.

CBS also will have a 24-hour-a-day news bureau headquartered at the international broadcast center in Nagano. The bureau is headed by versatile sports commentator Craig James, CBS News’ Bill Felling and senior producer Draggan Mihailovich.

There are many pieces to the puzzle to the huge task that lies ahead for CBS. Then, after it’s all done, everybody goes home to rest.

Nantz, however, goes straight to Los Angeles to work the Nissan Open at Valencia Country Club, which starts the week after the end of the Olympics.

But Nantz isn’t complaining about being overworked. He and his colleagues are just glad that things at CBS are once again looking up.

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Best Ratings

Top 10 highest-rated Olympics (national prime-time averages):

1. 1994 Winter (CBS): 27.8

2. 1972 Summer (ABC): 24.4

3. 1976 Summer (ABC): 23.9

4. 1980 Winter (ABC): 23.6

5. 1984 Summer (ABC): 23.2

6. 1996 Summer (NBC): 21.6

7. 1976 Winter (ABC): 21.3

8. 1988 Winter (ABC): 19.3

9. 1992 Winter (CBS): 18.7

10. 1988 Summer (ABC): 18.9