Olympics Coverage Fails U.S. Women’s Teams

Now that the 2004 Summer Olympic Games have come to a close, it might be the right time to evaluate the television coverage and the accessibility to view the sports U.S. fans most coveted during the Games. The NBC network claims it had 24/7 coverage, adding to its NBC free television broadcasts by way of its cable-owned stations: MSNBC, CNBC, USA, and Bravo.

The program schedules only showed general times for any number of events on any of the various stations, to be covered anywhere from a two- to four-hour period, leaving the viewer to guess as to the time an event they very much wanted to see would be shown.

In addition, the West Coast audience was totally left in the dark when television viewing times other than the primetime shows were published as Eastern times; occasionally, however, Pacific times were advertised during broadcasts, which turned out to be incorrect every time. It became impossible for the West Coast viewer to know any viewing times at all, as many events were taped delayed from the posted Eastern Time zone.

Sports fans, as opposed to the general public, which will take what they can get on primetime broadcasts, were led to believe that the 24/7 format was a sports fan's dream come true. The avid sports fan follows particular events and wants to know when they will be aired.

NBC would not have been divulging crypt secrets had it merely told fans when, for example, the U.S. Women's Soccer team or the U.S. Women's Basketball team games were going to be aired, since it turns out they were all aired various times in the middle of the night.

With the exception of the gold medal game for women's soccer which aired during the day and which NBC published and advertised at a wrong viewing time for the West Coast, it was impossible to view any other women's team sports.

This has led to the conclusion that the Olympics and NBC could care less about attracting the avid fans, since they assume we will watch the Olympics anyway. The broadcaster's goal is to attract the passive fan, primarily with its primetime programs when advertising revenues are at their most lucrative.

They teased the rest of us with the idea that we could watch whatever other sports we wanted, but then either did not specifically tell us when they would be on, or incorrectly published the times.

Unfortunately, the team events that fell victim to this spotty coverage most were the U.S. Women's Soccer team (considered one of the greatest women's sports stories in the history of Women's International Soccer), the U.S. Women's Basketball team (now competing with the professionals from the WNBA), and the U.S. Women's Softball team (having won their third consecutive Olympic gold medal).

Those of us in touch with reality know that women's sports are nowhere near the top of the mind awareness of most American sports fans, which are primarily men. However, the Olympics provided a stage for women's sports with a chance to shine.

We all know that women's sports are given virtually no airtime after the Olympic Games. Most men consider the WNBA a joke, and due to a lack of funding, the WUSA, which was a terrific way to keep women's soccer alive in the U.S., lasted three seasons and is now defunct.

The women who were most featured during these Olympic Games were individual medalists in events such as swimming and gymnastics. That would be great if they were hailed for their talents, but too often, we heard about how those who the press considered physically attractive would be reeling in endorsements because they were good-looking or cute, not necessarily good leaders, good sportswomen, or highly-disciplined human beings. Little of it had to do with athletic accomplishment.

It has not seemed to change since we all celebrated the feats of gymnast Mary Lou Retton in 1984 and swimmer Janet Evans in 1988 and 1992. They too were featured in the press because they were cute teenagers, and not because of their terrific feats. They were celebrated more as unusually talented rather than as tremendous athletes.

It was evident during these Games that NBC once again underestimated the interests of the sports fan and assumed that "everyone" (really meaning the male audience), would want to watch hours and hours of women's beach volleyball.

Women's beach volleyball perhaps got the most television coverage of any women's competition over the entirety of these Olympics Games. They were featured not only during the day, but also were given hours and hours in prime time coverage.

Historically, the U.S. is not terribly interested in beach volleyball, as it certainly does not lend itself to television viewing. More importantly, women's beach volleyball is not a compelling Olympic sport.

By showing women in bikinis, NBC believed it was catering to the male audience and insultingly so, implying that they would get more fannies on sofas if they gave hours and hours of coverage to bikini laden babes.

This does not sit well with sports fans in general. (If guys need another outlet, they probably would much rather purchase the famous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue in February, exclusively devoted to near naked women, most of whom are not even athletes.)

Even though women have tremendously excelled athletically in their Olympic pursuits over the past 20 years, they have not garnered much more respect or clout since then from the public. That includes television coverage, funding, or opportunities for women athletes to compete. For some, the only way they have been able to afford to compete is by posing for incendiary ads and cashing in on their 15 minutes of fame, which is actually closer to five minutes for women athletes.

And more importantly, network television which could help women's sports tremendously just in how they cover women's athletic events, still does not consider them important enough to promote other than as afterthoughts, and that on its face is a sad statement for U.S. women's sports in our so-called "evolved" society, now in its 21st century.