Olympics On TV Fell Victim To, Basically, Overkill

Want to know why the TV ratings for these Winter Olympics were down roughly 30 percent from four years ago?

Want to know why TV ratings for the Winter Olympics were the worst since 1968?

Here are six reasons:

Overexposure

Didn’t we just have the Olympics?

Yes, we did. A year and half ago in Atlanta.

Remember?

Once the Olympics were a genuine Event, something different. Once every four years. A chance to see sports we usually didn’t see. Now? With the new format we now have an Olympics every two years, and familiarity can breed - if not exactly contempt - at least a certain ho-hum.

There’s also the fact there’s a glut of sports on television all the time, winter sports included. Did you miss Tara Lipinski and Michelle Kwan in the Olympics? No matter. Rest assured they’ll pop up somewhere else on TV in a few weeks. In fact, they’re on TV so much they’ve become as familiar as house pets.

The fact that the Olympics are something truly unusual?

No more.

Now they’re just another TV mini-series.

Lines blurred

Once upon a time the Olympics were the bastion of amateurism, at least in theory. They often were the culmination of years of sacrifice and anonymous hard work by athletes we weren’t even all that familiar with, the culmination of some glorious quest.

No more.

The line between amateur and professional has become so blurred it’s virtually non-existent. Or do we really need Wayne Gretzky in the Winter Olympics? Or any of the other NHL superstars for that matter? Do we really need professional athletes getting in the way, hogging the limelight, turning the Olympics into just another event, no different than some World Cup somewhere?

This blurring of the lines is reinforced further by the corporate presence, the commercialism that seems to smother everything like a blanket. From the athletes who have become walking signboards to the endless TV commercials, the underlying message seems to be that this is all really about money, the sports just have to get in the way once in a while.

Too many sports

Do we really need snow-boarding?

Do we really need to make the Winter Games virtually indistinguishable from the X-Games?

And how about ice dancing?

This is just not a problem with the Winter Games. More and more it seems as if the Olympics are one big stage for hire, almost as if you can bring your own sport. Ballroom dancing? Motorcycle racing? Is there any end to it?

Once the Olympics came at us with tradition, the knowledge that certain sports were Olympic sports and that was it. Now it’s open season. Have a sport? See you in the Olympics. As if the Olympics has become like some sports version of an equal opportunity employer?

The result?

Too many sports that too few people care about. Too many sports that add to the clutter.

Global village

Once the Olympics were a true gathering of different nations, different cultures, a wonderful festival distinguished by its differences.

Now?

Everyone looks the same. The same outfits. The same equipment. The same Nike “swoosh” stitched to their clothing.

Maybe its inevitable, the power of television to shrink the world. Maybe it’s the reality that the world is, indeed, a smaller place than it used to be, linked by a technology that once would have been unthinkable. But more and more there’s the feeling that the differences that once made the Olympics so compelling are simply not there anymore.

Loss of innocence

We all know too much.

We know about steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. We know about teenage figure skaters who essentially leave their families to go off and train. We know about the huge money that waits at the end of the gold medal in figure skating. We know about hockey players who trash hotel rooms after they lose.

The cumulative effect is that the Olympics just don’t provide the same emotional response they used to, that feeling that they’re the ultimate pinnacle of the athletic experience. They now seem to come with an asterisk, a layer of cynicism that hovers over the Olympics like a thin layer of ice on new-fallen snow.

We all know too much.

Too much figure skating

It was quickly apparent figure skating was CBS’ ticket to ride.

But did the network really think it was going to turn figure skating into the National Pastime? Did CBS really think it was going to make Joe Six-Pack be riveted to his set?

Maybe the network thought it had to do this, that this was where the biggest mass audience was. Maybe they thought the base of their audience was women, and women like figure skating. Maybe they were even right.

But too often these Olympics seemed little more than some figure skating festival somewhere. Too often you turned on the Olympics and there was figure skating again, like some old sitcom you’ve already seen too many times before. Enough, already.

For if you’ve seen one triple lutz you’ve seen them all.