For CBS, Not Even a Bronze Is Likely

The beat goes on for CBS. Some of the network’s bad breaks have been out of its control, but others have not.

On Sunday night, CBS showed the U.S.-Canada hockey game, one of the marquee events of the Winter Olympics, live at 11:45 p.m. in the East but delayed three hours in the West.

CBS was pleased with the rating it got for the game--a 4.9 with a 14 share, the highest rating for a network hockey broadcast in two decades. Fox’s highest rating in four years of NHL coverage was a 4.1 for the All-Star game in 1996, which featured the debut of the glowing puck.

But think how much better CBS would have done had the U.S.-Canada game been on live across the country.

Also, on the Sunday night prime-time show, CBS chose to not show Hermann Maier’s gold-medal run in the super-giant slalom, instead holding it for Monday night’s show.

And this after showing replays of Maier’s wipeout in the downhill about a 1,000 times.

What CBS is doing is treating the Nagano Games as entertainment rather than a sports event. Timeliness doesn’t seem to matter.

When it comes to the way American television covers an Olympics, the show is all that seems important.

NBC was able to artificially drive up ratings for the Atlanta Summer Games by giving viewers an inordinate amount of gymnastics and other sports deemed popular among women while virtually ignoring such sports as boxing, baseball, soccer and softball.

But in Nagano, there is nothing CBS has been able to do to salvage a ratings dip.

Sunday night’s prime time coverage, featuring ice dancing and Picabo Street in the downhill, got a 17.9 rating and a 28 share. That was 39% lower than the 29.3/44 from Lillehammer and 16% lower than the 21.2/32 from Albertville.

After 10 nights of coverage, CBS was averaging a 16.6/27, 35% behind the 25.7/39 from Lillehammer and 12% below the 18.9/30 from Albertville.

That the U.S. lost to Canada, 4-1, to drop to 1-2 didn’t help.

Then, CBS was hoping to catch a break if Sweden would have had to forfeit its earlier victory over the U.S. because of Ulf Samuelsson’s disqualification.

But the International Ice Hockey Federation allowed Sweden’s victory to stand even though it ruled Samuelsson ineligible because he has two passports.

Nothing is going right for CBS.

CBS guaranteed advertisers at least a 19.5 rating, meaning it will have to give away extra ads this week to compensate.

Yes, more commercials.

Complaints are coming from everywhere regarding the number of commercials. John Krimsky, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s deputy secretary general and managing director for business affairs, has joined in.

“We recognize that the commercial networks have a right and a need to recoup the amounts they pay to the International Olympic Committee for rights fees,” he said. “We just suggest that the networks perhaps should rethink the number of commercial breaks.”

CBS, in an effort to salvage these Games, will use one of its aces on tonight’s show--a feature on Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.

There will be none of the bought-and-paid-for dramatics Fox provided two weeks ago, but it still should be interesting, what with Harry Smith interviewing Kerrigan, Harding and the conspirators in the “Gang That Couldn’t Whack Straight.”