CBS’ Games Plan

Call it Winter Olympics 101.

In preparation for the XVIII Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, the CBS hosts, analysts and reporters have been hitting the books and working with researchers to learn everything they need to know about the 17-day athletic competition, which begins Friday.

“The analysts and play-by-play people get manuals regularly, with monthly digests and now weekly digests and research notebooks,” say Rick Gentile, senior vice president and executive producer of the Olympic coverage.

“Olympic researchers have been sending us journals for the past two years,” says Andrea Joyce, who will be co-hosting the weekend daytime broadcasts with Bill Macatee. She also was the weekend host in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994 and Albertville, France in 1992.

“We also get these big manuals--eight of them--and they are on each different sport,” offers Joyce, whose husband, Harry Smith, also will be reporting in Nagano for CBS. “Obviously, the guy who is calling the ski jumping will take the ski jumping manual and know it cover by cover. My interest is really in the bigger picture for something like this. In hosting, you have to have more general knowledge than the specific broadcasters do.”

Joyce says she looks for “quirky things, the interesting things about the sites. We also have conference calls with the research staff. We have a researcher assigned to us and on the weekends, Bill and I get on the phone with him.”

To further prepare its commentators, CBS sent the majority to Nagano to familiarize them with the picturesque city, which is home to the famed Zenkoji Temple.

“We like to get them over there,” Gentile explains. “[Then] if somebody asks Andrea a question, she is speaking intelligently about the area. She knows what a building looks like. She knows what the prime-time set looks like, what the temple area looks like.”

“I’ve been over there twice now,” says Joyce. “I spent 10 days there in November. We got to ride the luge. We did all of these fabulous things. You get a better [sense] of the area. You can actually get out and experience the city and feel like you’re a part of what’s going on there. Otherwise, you might as well sit in New York and do it from [there].”

Because of the time difference between Japan and the United States (it’s 11 hours ahead of Pacific time here), most of the events will be seen on tape.

“We will try to do the men’s and women’s downhill live,” Gentile says. “Our hockey coverage in late night will be live [on the East Coast].” But generally, he adds, “It’s very difficult to do this kind of outdoor sports live with weather delays and difficulties.”

Joyce reports that for anchors such as herself and Macatee, the principal job is playing traffic cop: “It’s to get [viewers] from one place to another and try to make it as seamless as possible. I think our goal is to bring in a lot of the flavor of the games.”

She’ll also be taping feature stories for the broadcast and will be doing in-studio interviews.

“It’s very difficult to get an athlete who is about to compete in the studio, but after someone wins a medal, we’ll definitely do an interview,” says Joyce. “We’ll have some of the experts from venues come out and talk to us. We can do satellite interviews [from different venues].”

Usually, Joyce reports, the script is discarded early into the telecast. “You go with what’s important and fly by the seat of your pants,” she says.

Tracy Wilson concurs. “There is so much going on,” says CBS’ reporter and analyst for figure skating who won the bronze medal for ice dancing in the Calgary games 10 years ago.

“It’s happening so quickly and you have to figure out what it is that people need to know, what’s going to enhance their viewing,” Wilson says. “Nothing is carved in stone. You try to be as prepared as you can going in, but you have to be really, really flexible.”

As a former athlete, Wilson says, “I can relate to the skaters so well. But in order to do my job properly, I have to be very careful not to get too excited and caught up in it. You have to detach yourself from it a bit emotionally and analyze what they are doing. But your heart is pounding and hoping they have really good skates.”

Wilson, who will be working with play-by-play announcer Verne Lundquist and analyst Scott Hamilton, acknowledges that figure skating has been on a roll since 1988.

“‘I think they were great Olympics in ’92. Going into ‘94, everyone thought it was going to be a bit of a letdown, but it was huge. I feel like skating is on an up right now. We saw that in Michelle Kwan’s skating on the [national championships], and technically what the men are doing--I think it’s really on a high.”

She credits Lundquist and Hamilton for making her job so enjoyable. “It’s a treat to work with them. I have so much respect for them. It’s so give and take, and Verne works to try to accommodate us. When you work with people like that, it helps you so much to be relaxed and comfortable.”

Joyce has discovered over the past six years that audiences prefer the Winter Olympics to the Summer games.

“I think in the summer games, especially with the NBA players and the track and field people, they are megastars--megacelebs riding around in limos,” Joyce says.

“I think the reason why we are all taken with the Winter Olympics is that these are people you can relate to. They seem more like your cousin or your neighbor. They train their whole lives in relative obscurity. They are more accessible--they don’t blow you off.”