Winter Games Served to West Coast on Ice

It will be 10 p.m. here--5 a.m. in Los Angeles--when Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski complete their possible skate-off for the Olympic women’s figure skating gold medal on Friday, Feb. 20.

Eighteen hours later, West Coast television viewers will be able to tune in to CBS to see just how Kwan or Lipinski may have triumphed.

In fact, every gold-medal performance at the Nagano Winter Olympics will be seen tape-delayed on the West Coast.

Every triple axel, every downhill run, every shot on goal will be recorded, canned and preserved, for anywhere from three to 18 hours, before consumption in Southern California households is permitted.

Welcome to the Memorex Olympics, where everything you see--even if studio host Jim Nantz has assured you it’s live--will be on tape.

Because of the 17-hour time difference between Nagano and Los Angeles, coupled with CBS’ decision to cater first to its East Coast audience, West Coast viewers find themselves in the unique position of readying for 128 hours of Winter Olympics television coverage--and not one of them live.

On the East Coast, downhill skiing will be aired live on CBS’ prime-time show, and hockey will be shown live on the late-night program, which will follow David Letterman’s “The Late Show.”

Those same programs will be held three hours for West Coast viewing in the same time slots, which means that “live” men’s downhill scheduled for 8:15 p.m. Saturday will actually be three hours old when finally seen in Los Angeles.

“We’re not going to say, ‘Let’s go out to the men’s downhill live now’ to everybody but those people living in the Mountain and West Coast time zones,” said Rick Gentile, CBS executive producer for the Winter Olympics.

And CBS has no plans to add a graphic disclaimer for audiences in the Mountain and West Coast time zones either.

“You’re not going to put up a graphic that says ‘On Tape’ constantly,” Gentile said.

West of the Rockies, CBS runs the risk of being scooped on its “live” coverage by intrepid fans of the Winter Games who log on to the Internet or keep vigil by the radio, learning the results hours before they are shown on television.

But will that keep people from watching? History, Gentile suggests, is on the side of CBS.

“If we learned anything from Albertville and Lillehammer [French and Norwegian sites of the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics], it’s that people will watch,” Gentile said. The Lillehammer Games, in fact, were the most watched Olympics, the Albertville Games ninth.

“In the past, we’ve held figure skating, for instance, because of the time difference, and the ratings obviously haven’t suffered. I don’t think they will if they’re held a few hours longer. People always knew the results of figure skating before our coverage, and they always watched.”

During the Albertville and Lillehammer Games, both televised by CBS, figure skating took place at 8 p.m. in Europe--11 a.m. on the West Coast--and was held nine hours for CBS’ prime-time show.

“Everybody knew the results beforehand,” Gentile said. “They got home to watch the 6 o’clock news, and they were told who won--and people watched anyway.”

The hook?

“There’s no video that will be on before our show,” Gentile said. “You won’t see the performances until you see them on CBS.”

And hockey fans won’t see their favorite sport, with NHL stars competing in the Olympics for the first time, unless they brew a pot of late-night coffee and wait for CBS’ “live” coverage--which will begin between 11:35 p.m. and 1:05 a.m., depending on the day.

“The only input we really had in hockey [was] to move the start times of some games up about 15 minutes,” Gentile said. “So, games that will now start at 2:45 p.m. in Nagano, we can put on our late-night broadcast at 12:45 a.m.

But who, other than hard-core hockey fans, who need no converting, is likely to stay up until 3 in the morning to see how United States-Sweden turns out?

“I personally think that the late-night hockey coverage will reach a wider audience than the NHL has ever had,” said Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports. “A different kind of audience, and more. I think we’ll probably have ratings that are higher than the Stanley Cup finals.

“Secondly, hockey will get attention in our prime-time show. We’ve got big stars entered--the Wayne Gretzkys of the world--and by showing highlight packages in the prime-time show to, hopefully, audiences exceeding a 20 rating, hockey is going to get a great deal of exposure.”

As studio host for a recorded Olympics, Nantz said, “The degree of difficulty has been somewhat increased [from] our last two Olympics. . . . The time delays are going to make it a really interesting 16-day stretch for our producers.”

Penner reported from Nagano and Stewart from Los Angeles.

* THE GAMES BEGIN: As Nagano prepares to shine, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee holds his breath. C1

* COMMERCIAL BREAK: Olympics sponsors are spending big in hopes of bringing home the green. D1