ohstuskaterpunk said:
The games of the 21st Olympiad was celebrated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada from July 17 to August 1, 1976 and ABC Sports covered the games.
Why was network coverage shorter back then than it is in modern times? Since the 1990s, there has been weekday daytime coverage of Olympic competition.
Several factors answer the question.
First, there was virtually nothing in the way of cable networks. ESPN, later purchased by ABC's then-parent company, Walt Disney, wasn't created until 1979 by the Getty Oil Co.
Second, back then, weekday coverage was pretty much limited to late night highlight shows that followed your late local news.
Third, unless something huge like the Munich tragedy happened, the Olympics didn't generate much interest outside of basketball, track and field, and women's gymnastics.
Fourth, The Olympics themselves were also their own worst enemy, as far as the USA was concerned. When the '76 Games were awarded to Montreal back in 1970, it was done basically at the cost of the US. There was a vicious bidding war going on between the USSR and the US for the '76 Games. Montreal was a compromise choice by the International Olympic Committee.
Fifth, The Summer Olympics had not been in the US since 1932. As far as IOC President Avery Brundage, an American no less, was concerned, that had been recent enough. The very aristocratic Brundage, along with his main henchwoman, French IOC representative Monique Berloux, threw all his weight behind most cities who bid against the US. In a 2-city contest between Los Angeles and Moscow for the 1980 Games, Berloux did whatever she had to do to lobby for Moscow's winning bid. Never mind that TV revenues from the USA represented about 60% of TV revenues collected world wide. They liked collecting our money, but God forbid that we would actually get to host an actual summer Olympics.
Sixth, Ancient Avery Brundage passed on in 1973, and Berloux was pushed out in 1977. The Olympics started taking on a more modern outlook. In 1979, Los Angeles was finally awarded the 1984 summer games when the IOC had a choice of only L.A. and Tehran. No other cities wanted them. That's how bad the reputation of the IOC had become. One of the leaders of Tehran's unsuccessful bid: Monique Berloux.
Long story short (finally): Los Angeles had the most financially successful Games ever, prompting the world's cities to try to duplicate L.A.'s financial feats, and causing the IOC to ask itself why it kept the games out of the United States for so long. A few years later, Atlanta was awarded the 1996 Summer Games. Last I read, Montreal was still paying for the '76 Games, and the name of Moon Landreaux, Montreal's mayor at the time, is used in vain.
Interest in the games increased once they were in the US. For the 1992 Barcelona Games, NBC came up with the TripleCast, where they created 3 temporary premium channels for non-stop, 24-hour coverage of the Games. For more recent Olympic coverage, NBC has farmed out Olympic events to CNBC and MSNBC. The interest that wasn't there before is most definitely there now.
