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...four years ABC has been preparing for the XXIII Olympiad, practicing its skills, flexing its electronic muscles and pouring more than $325 million TV rights and enough new gadgets and gizmos to set up a whole new network. This week, as the Los Angeles Games begin, an expected audience of -is it possible? - 2 billion plus, over half the people on earth, will be able to judge what ABC has achieved with all that money and exertion. Never in TV history have so many events been covered over so vast an area. Says Julius Barnathan, head of ABC...
Making its task harder still is ABC's obligation, under the terms of its contract with the International Olympic Committee, to supply coverage to foreign networks around the world of all the events, not just those, such as swimming and track and field, that are of particular interest to Americans. In all, 140 countries, territories and protectorates will be rooting for their favorite athletes, and ABC cameras must record every sweaty moment: a total of 1,300 hours. For the events being broadcast to Americans, the network must have parallel coverage, one neutral view for the world feed...
Such an immense undertaking requires unusual effort, and ABC executives have planned for their 18 days in Los Angeles the way a general staff plans for war, marshaling a regiment of 3,500 employees. Among them: more than 50 on-air reporters and commentators headed by genial Anchorman Jim McKay, 1,500 engineers, and 250 drivers to move 902 cars, trucks and buses. "There are now so many people that I have to park three blocks away from the studio," complains a producer for Los Angeles' KABC-TV, which shares a parking lot with ABC's Olympians...
...were tucked away on platforms placed diagonally behind the podium: even when standing, many of them could not see the speakers, the delegates or much of anything else except the glowing network insignia and the distant figures of CBS's Dan Rather, NBC's Tom Brokaw and ABC's Peter Jennings and David Brinkley. Said Editor Robert Maynard of the Oakland Tribune: "This is just another dramatic example that TV has completely taken over center stage in American politics...
...they aired highlights for little more than two hours a night. CBS did not even carry addresses by the nation's highest-ranking Democrat, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, or by Congressman Morris Udall, who controversially urged the party to reconcile itself with former President Jimmy Carter. ABC, misled about what time Jesse Jackson would speak, cut away from Tuesday evening's session to broadcast 24 minutes of a rerun of the thriller series Hart to Hart; it returned to the convention without finishing the story (not to worry, the Harts trapped the would-be assassin...