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Monday, January 5, 2009 |
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The big story
Covering the Olympic coverage
First the good news, the bosses said. "You're going to be part of Sun Media's Olympics coverage team!"
Yeah, not so fast. With the Olympics being one of the most widely watched events of any kind in the world, it turns out that someone has to spectate the spectators. And I drew the short straw. How are fans experiencing the Olympics? How are the TV networks competing -- or collaborating -- with the Internet? How many ways can one man soak up all things Olympics-related? How much is too much? To find out, I'll essentially be under house arrest for 17 days straight, bathed in the glow of twin television sets and my laptop screen, my eyelids propped open with toothpicks, subsisting on a diet of take-out food from places that will deliver at 3 a.m. Hey, that's when women's volleyball is on! I'll be watching an unhealthy amount of Olympics coverage on TV and online, surfing an ungodly number of Olympics-related websites and generally experiencing the five-ring circus in every fathomable way, like checking out event highlights on my Olympics-themed mobile phone while drinking a refreshing can of Olympics-branded Coke. The catch is, I'm not a diehard fan of the Olympics. But is anyone really a quote-unquote fan? Or do we mainly tune in for the medal tallies, the heartwarming athlete bios and to see what kind of weirdness unfolds during the opening and closing ceremonies? Whatever the case, few events get the kind of global, all-consuming, hypersaturated media coverage that the Olympics do, and there will be no end of things to absorb, experience, interpret and (more than likely) make puerile and sarcastic remarks about. So please, don't come to me for daily analysis of the events or the results -- that will be in the very capable hands of the team over in China, and our colleagues slaving over their computers back here in the office. Come to me if you want to hear a funny gaffe that Ron MacLean made on the air, or find out about a particularly cool athlete's blog, or get a link to a YouTube video of Beijing police arresting protestors. Or maybe just for some tips on how to get a toothpick out of your eye. Because it's even harder than it looks. Steve Tilley is a Sun Media writer.
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E-MAIL: Steve Tilley