The most spectacular opening ceremony of a modern Olympiad is in the bag. 15,000 in the cast. Synchronised fireworks, drumming and dancing wowed an audience of 4 billion globally on the telly. A remarkable festival of colours and digital effects combined with movements that took a year to rehearse under what had to have been less than ideal conditions has the Brits talking tonight on radio about how they can come close in 2012, let alone top it. The quadrennial festival of Sports bringing 204-nations together on the world stage has begun flawlessly, a model of efficiency and national pride.
The problem is it’s held this year in a country known for brutality and suppression of human rights and press freedom at all coats. So whitewash has covered the Bird’s Nest, everything is coated with smiles, spit polished and shined to a show a surreal city in a surreal time. According to Chinese officials, “these Olympic Games will be the best ever.” And you get the feeling behind the smiling faces, there is real fear if anyone screws it up. Even if outside of China.
The dissidents are duly behind bars or dead, shoved into brutal prisons or, if lucky to be from another country, simply deported. The children rather than nestled snug in their beds danced and flew across the stadium floor, cooed, sang and the world oohed and aahed the show. The athletes will justifiably take centre stage and commentators, when they can access the Internet, will write flowing words about the spectacle and ignore everything else.
Even the armed struggle between Russia and Georgia will take place in relative anonymity because the world will now focus on Beijing for the next 16-days as the Games of the 29th Summer Olympiad occupy centre stage and mark China’s global coming out party.
Well, that’s what they hope anyways.
We live in a 24-hour newscycle where despite the best efforts of NBC to dictate event starting times because of the obscene amount of money being paid by them to broadcast the spectacle), events are a global 24-hour phenomenon.
Watching the ceremony live in the UK, I realised America was just waking up and NBC had to embargo images for 12-hours. Problem is on the Internet in the USA many watched as it happens and that is the challenge of these games. Broadcasting 12-hour delayed news, ensuring sponsor ads get viewed and making it all look good.
I’ve talked about appointment television in the context of the newshour no one watches. Now with video and news on demand 24/7 this will be the ultimate ratings test, getting folks to watch events long concluded and results long known.
Even the NBC Today show broadcasts live outside the stadium. What a challenge that must be to keep firework, crowd and stadium noise secret until the evening. This could be the last Olympiad where any of this will be possible.
Things improve slightly in London 2012 where the time change is a more reasonable five hours but still mid-afternoon breakfast at the Olympics (like Wimbledon) will be tough for US viewers and forget any morning event having a shelf life or viewers waiting for NBC to broadcast evening events that happen during the dinner hour.
So the challenge will become, how does one stage an Olympiad without £2-3 billion dollars of US television money and sponsorships? That will be interesting to see when the 2016 host is announced in 18-months’ time.
Meanwhile it’s time to sleep for a couple of hours, Saturday’s dressage events begin at midnight.
