The title card for the ABC Olympic Games coverage. Note the integration of the network logo into the Olympic symbol.
The Olympic Games aired in the United States on the broadcast networkABC during the 1960s to the 1980s. ABC first televised the Winter Olympic Games in 1964,[1] and the Summer Olympic Games in 1968.[2] ABC last televised the Summer Olympics in 1984 and Winter Olympics in 1988.
History
1960s
While CBS aired both the 1960 Winter and Summer Games (marking the first time that the Olympics were broadcast on American television), by 1964, a different network showed the Winter Games: ABC. Roone Arledge won broadcast rights for his network and began a relationship with the "five rings" that would last over two decades. The program used many of the same production staff from ABC's Wide World of Sports, as well as the same host, Jim McKay, who moved to ABC from CBS in 1961. In 1968, ABC showed both the Winter Games and the Summer Games.
1964 Winter Olympics
The 1964 Winter Games were in Innsbruck, Austria, and coverage was taped and flown by plane back to the United States. All of it was in black-and-white, but with most Winter Olympic events in the morning (local time), most TV coverage aired the day the events were held. A portion of the Closing Ceremony was televised live via satellite (Telstar, which had to be tracked and allowed about a 15-minute window between the U.S. and Europe when it was zooming over the Atlantic). Everything else was videotaped and flown to the U.S. via a Munich-London-New York route. There was little margin for error. If a flight was canceled, ABC had a tape of a U.S.-Romania hockey game, played the day before the Opening Ceremony and shipped over, ready to play. All went well and it never made the air.
ABC aired 16.5 hours of coverage of the Innsbruck Games, the majority of the coverage occurring outside of primetime.[3]
1968 Winter Olympics
By 1968, ABC was broadcasting the Olympics in full color, and satellites made possible live coverage of several events at the Winter Games in Grenoble, France. In reality, only the Opening Ceremony and the ladies figure skating final were televised live via satellite; most other coverage was sent via satellite to ABC and run off tape from New York. The 1968 Winter Olympics were the first to be televised in color (except for a couple of events French television fed in black-and-white).
Highlighting the 1968 Winter Games was a dramatic sweep in men's alpine skiing by Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy, while the major highlight of the Summer Games was a world-record long jump by Bob Beamon of the United States, which happened to air live in the US.
1968 Summer Olympics
Nearly all of the network's coverage of the Summer Games in Mexico City was broadcast live due to the time difference and how close America and Mexico are in travel.
After an unsuccessful rescue attempt of the athletes held hostage, at 3:24 AM German Time, McKay came on the air with this statement:[4][5]
When I was a kid my father used to say "Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized." Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They have now said there were 11 hostages; two were killed in their rooms this morn-- yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone.
— McKay, 1972
McKay later won an Emmy Award for his coverage.[6] He stated in a 2003 HBO documentary about his life and career that he was most proud of a telegram he received from Walter Cronkite the day after the massacre praising his work.
By the time the 1976 edition came around, McKay was now installed at the host, a role he would play throughout the 1970s and '80s. ABC also aired the 1980 Winter Olympics.
In the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, and the 1984 games in Los Angeles, Howard Cosell was the main voice for boxing. Sugar Ray Leonard won the gold medal in his light welterweight class at Montreal, beginning his meteoric rise to a world professional title three years later. Cosell became close to Leonard, during this period, announcing many of his fights.[10]
Chuck Mangione's instrumental song "Give It All You Got" was originally featured as the official theme of the 1980 Winter Olympics, held in Lake Placid, New York.[11] ABC had used Mangione's recordings four years earlier during their coverage of the 1976 Summer Olympics, and then-ABC Sports president Roone Arledge asked the musician to create the theme song for the Winter games.[11] Mangione also performed the song live at the Closing Ceremonies on February 24.[12]
The 1980 Winter Olympics was the setting for the "Miracle on Ice", a medal-round men's ice hockey game in Lake Placid, New York, on February 22. The United States team, made up of amateur and collegiate players and led by coach Herb Brooks, defeated the Soviet team, which consisted of veteran professional players with significant experience in international play. The rest of the United States (except those who watched the game live on Canadian television) had to wait to see the game, as ABC decided to broadcast the late-afternoon game on tape delay in prime time.[13] Sportscaster Al Michaels, who was calling the game on ABC along with former Montreal Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden, picked up on the countdown in his broadcast, and delivered his famous call:[14]
Eleven seconds, you've got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? YES!
An indent for ABC Sports' coverage of the 1984 Winter Olympics. This instance during the closing ceremony.
The Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics, and 1988 Winter Olympics were hosted on ABC by Jim McKay and Peter Jennings.[15][16]
After that, ABC, at the insistence of new owner Capital Cities Communications[17] (much to the chagrin of Roone Arledge's successor at ABC Sports, Dennis Swanson), opted not to bid for the rights to show any future Games. Subsequently, The Walt Disney Company acquired Capital Cities-ABC in 1995 and began the process of putting more effort into the branding of ABC's sports channel ESPN than of ABC Sports itself.
According to Al Michaels,[18] ABC was in the running to purchase the broadcasting rights for the 1996 Summer Games from Atlanta. As a provision in his contract renewal with ABC back in 1992, in the event that ABC were to broadcast the Olympics again, Michaels would get to become the prime time anchor while Jim McKay would instead play an emeritus role. Ultimately though, NBC bought the rights to the Atlanta Games for $456 million, edging out ABC by $6 million.
In August 2008, ESPN, which produces sports broadcasts for ABC (branded as ESPN on ABC), stated that they would make a serious bid for the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia and the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. However, NBC won the rights to American television coverage of the Olympics through the 2020 Summer Games.[19]
As of May 7, 2014, NBC now holds control of the Olympic television coverage in the United States through the 2032 Summer Games.
