NBC Aiming to Play to Nation’s Mood

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have galvanized Americans, inspiring patriotism and heightening interest in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, according to research by NBC, which will televise the Games.

Of 1,000 adults surveyed nationwide, 55% said the Salt Lake Games had become “important to me” in the wake of the terrorist attacks, 80% said they plan to watch the Games on TV and 90% said it “makes me proud” to know that the United States is hosting the Games. They begin Feb. 8.

NBC is thus readying a Games telecast unapologetically shaded in red, white and blue.

“It’s shaping up to be a patriotic catharsis for a lot of people, an opportunity for everyone in the country to come together, a shared kind of experience rooting for the home team,” network President Randy Falco said.

NBC’s strategy probably will invite criticism of a sort that has pervaded recent Games--that the U.S. broadcaster, whether NBC or CBS, favors U.S. athletes to the exclusion of competitors from other nations.

Falco and other NBC executives say they are mindful of such history. But they also said that the Salt Lake Games--which will be the last in the United States for at least 10 years--take place at a unique juncture in U.S. history.

Said Falco: “You know what? It may be very patriotic. I would argue we would never do the Olympics to the exclusion of everyone else. We always try to do the best story. If the best story is the American athlete, we’ll do that. If it’s a foreign athlete, we’ll do that.”

The network research, meanwhile, underscores the extraordinary waves of emotion that have washed across the nation since the Sept. 11 attacks.

“When you do research, and you get [percentages] in the 80s, one in the 90s, you never see that,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of NBC’s research department.

“The Olympics conveys certain emotions and attitudes, about athletes and humankind. I think people are looking for that now. They’re looking for any tangible expression of that. And one of the things that comes to mind, when you bring it to their attention, is, ‘Oh, yeah, the Olympics.”’

The network’s research was commissioned in part to find out whether the attacks posed a threat to NBC’s investment in the Olympics. The network is paying $3.5 billion for exclusive U.S. rights to televise the Games between 2000 and 2008.

The survey was conducted Sept. 28-30 by NBC’s research staff. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5%.

With the franchise apparently still intact--barring more attacks on the United States--NBC executives dare now to predict that the Salt Lake Games could be memorable, both for viewers and for the network.

“We’re feeling very good about it,” Falco said. “You always knock on wood. But ratings-wise, it will be a triumph for Dick and the production team,” a reference to NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol.

“Sales are shaping up very nicely. There’s a lot of excitement among our customers and affiliates and advertisers. Everyone is very excited about this. I think they should be. It comes at a very good time for everybody, both from the viewers’ point of view and the business side.”

Neal Pilson, the former CBS Sports president who has his own consulting firm, Pilson Communications, said: “There’s probably a good deal of validity to that research.”

CBS aired the previous three Winter Games--from Nagano, Japan, in 1998; from Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994; and from Albertville, France, in 1992.

Pilson said of the Salt Lake Games: “The U.S. team will, sure, be carrying the flag. But the special thing about the Olympics--and something I always insisted upon at CBS--was, ‘Show the anthem. Show the medal awards ceremony.’ That’s what makes the Games special.”

The survey results also have helped shape NBC’s promotional strategy for the Games, which will be heavily targeted at advertisers’ dream demographic, 18-to 34-year-olds.

In that 18-34 group, for instance, the percentage of those who said the Olympics have become “important to me” is 60%, higher than the 55% figure overall.

Other numbers also underscore what researchers believe has been a dramatic shift in attitudes among younger viewers since Sept. 11.

Among those 18-34, 88% said it “makes me proud” to have the Games in the United States; 78% said they plan to watch the Games on TV.

Those figures are in line with results from the general population; if the survey had been taken this spring or summer, the 18-34 numbers would have been significantly lower, Wurtzel said.

“Something substantial and significant changed after Sept. 11,” he said. “All this fits into patriotism and people’s view of the world and themselves after the tragedy. In this instance, it’s so clear and so consistent with what’s going on on the larger scale.”

Before Sept. 11, “people under 35 saw the Olympics in a very different way than people over 35,” according to Wurtzel.

The older group sees the Olympics “through the prism of the Cold War” and vividly recalls, for instance, the 1980 U.S. hockey team’s victory over the Soviet team, leading ultimately to the gold medal at the Lake Placid Games.

“If you’re under 35, it’s a very different world you grew up in,” Wurtzel said. “It’s not that they didn’t like [the Games]; they do. For them, though, the Olympics are just another big event equivalent to the Academy Awards or the Golden Globes or the VH-1 and MTV awards. Those are literal things they told us.

“To make a long story short, we just couldn’t take this group for granted, we were going to have to make the Olympics into something relevant for them.”

A number of NBC’s promotional spots feature bright colors, fast-paced action, busy graphics, quick-cut video framing and the rhythms of an insistent guitar--evocative of music videos on MTV.

A number are also purposely snappy in tone, such as the one in which U.S. bobsledders Jean Racine and Jen Davidson review figure skating thusly, “Beautiful, graceful, slow,” and pronounce themselves “the fastest girls on ice.”

Another spot is of a bogus home movie starring U.S. hockey player Cammi Granato as a kid--in which she’s cross-checking a figure skater in a pink tutu.

The network also has produced a movie trailer that shows U.S. snowboarder Chris Klug chased down a mountain by police cars, helicopters, motorcycles and snowmobiles as well as Santa Claus, someone in a bear costume and a couple of Hare Krishna-looking characters. In a working version of the trailer now circulating through the network, NBC is not mentioned--on the theory that younger viewers would view that as a blatant violation of the protocol of what’s hip and trendy. The trailer will be shown nationwide in January at 4,000 movie theaters.

Meantime, NBC figures to clear a healthy profit from the Salt Lake Games, even after factoring in the usual millions of dollars in promotional and production costs.

It cost NBC $545 million to buy the rights to the Salt Lake Olympics. NBC figures to take in more than $700 million. Advertising is already 92% sold.

This was the financial plan all along for NBC; it knew in 1995, when it struck the $3.5-billion deal with the International Olympic Committee, that Salt Lake was likely to be the only domestic Olympics from 2000 through 2008--which, as it turns out, it is.

Since striking that 1995 deal with NBC, the IOC has awarded the 2004 Summer Games to Athens, the 2006 Winter Games to Turin, Italy, and the 2008 Summer Games to Beijing.