Commentary
A Tribute To The Risk-Takers
By Jim Owens
Aug 31, 2004, 13:04

The awe-inspiring Olympics coverage we see today owes its excellence to risk-takers. Were it not for those individuals who pushed the technological (and often economic) envelope in the coverage of past Olympics, the Games, and sports television in general, would not be where they are today.
Some of these individuals, such as Leni Riefenstahl, took the risk of testing new and innovative production techniques. Others, such as Dick Ebersol, risked their careers by spending their network’s money on new techniques. The spirit of their innovation lives on, as the coverage of each and every Olympics continues to increase in quality. Thanks to the risk-takers, broadcast coverage of the Olympics has become the benchmark for all other television sports coverage. And the viewers benefit more than anyone. Indeed, we should give thanks to the risk-takers—those pioneering sports broadcasters who’ve made sports television what it is today.
The matriarch of sports coverage is Leni Riefenstahl. In 1936 she produced the film Olympia, a documentary of the Games. Applying production techniques previously used only in dramatic production, she analyzed the Games and then created innovative ways to present the events to viewers.
Riefenstahl dug trenches to allow tracking dollies to be pulled by cars, shot from unique angles, and pumped air down to a cameraman at the bottom of a pool. She took risks by building scaffolding, shooting handheld with long lenses, and shooting swimmers from a boat. At one point she even tied herself to a camera in order to save the position from being eliminated.
Her risks did not always pay off: Some cameras were tied to hot air balloons with a note attached asking the finder to return the camera. Although all of the cameras were returned, none of the footage was useable. However, as Broadcasting The Olympics states, “The shooting techniques used by Leni Riefenstahl have become standards for Olympic filmmaking and television coverage ever since.”
In 1960, risk-taker Roone Arledge created a plan for how he thought sports should be covered by television. His previously unheard of ideas included directional microphones, handheld cameras, ISO, commentator analysis, and the use of pre-recorded stories. As he moved ABC Sports into Olympic television coverage, he was also credited with introducing instant replays, slow motion, and animated graphics. His experimentation with coverage techniques transformed sports broadcasting.
There are still risk-takers out there today working on Olympic television. Arledge protégé Dick Ebersol, from NBC, has pushed the envelope by demanding innovative techniques for his network’s massive Olympics coverage. He has constantly looked for ways to improve the coverage. He has risked his reputation and NBC’s money in his quest to attract an audience by investing in new technologies and creating a broadcast strategy that drives the network’s coverage.
While Riefenstahl and Arledge made considerable contributions to the production aspects of the Olympics, Ebersol will probably be best remembered for his broadcast programming strategies, which analyzed the American audience and then created a programming plan to fit that analysis. His risks have paid off.
Another modern day risk-taker is Manolo Romero, president of International Sports Broadcasting (ISB). Easily the most influential individual in international sports television today, Romero is responsible for the host broadcast coverage of the Athens and the next two Olympics.
He has been the chief of broadcasting for seven Olympics. No one else has held this position as many times. Manolo’s risks have included committing to create an Olympic broadcast in countries that don’t always have the personnel or the technological infrastructure to handle it. One of his significant contributions to sports broadcasting is training university students to work on his Olympic broadcast crew. Through his training program, thousand of students around the world have gotten a jump start on their careers in the industry.
His impact on the global sports broadcasting industry is also significant in that networks from around the world are challenged to bring their own productions up to the level of the Olympic broadcasts.
While I have only mentioned four risk-takers, there are many more who have committed their lives to quality television sports production. Many are hidden in the shadows, working behind the scenes on technologies and strategies that make their bosses look good.
All of the risk-takers I mentioned have had to deal with defeat. Undeterred, these people have been willing to take a chance by doing things that no one else has ever done before. They have made the Olympics the largest sporting event in the world, an event watched for 16 continuous days throughout the world, even by people who generally don’t follow sports. As Michael Real once said in Television Quarterly, “...to say that the televised Olympics—along with the Super Bowl, the Oscars, the World Cup, and other super-events—play a leading role in celebrating and shaping our global culture is to begin to approach a realistic sense of television’s complex place in the world of today.”
Thanks to the risk-takers.




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