Good, thorough write-up. Think you hit on most of the points that needed to be hit upon.
For me, Nine have laid a really solid base moving forward towards Brisbane (and other Olympics). Hopefully they’ve learnt a few lessons with the things that could be improved upon;
They really don’t need two simultaneous hosts. In Bracey, McGuire, Kelly, Woodbridge and McArdle you’ve got five hosts who can/ have excelled hosting solo, whether over the last couple of weeks or elsewhere. By having them front the main channel’s coverage you give it more focus and fix something that didn’t work quite right in Paris
Be less passive in sport choices. As said, no need to be on the golf all night or miss/ delay certain events.
Just get a ‘live’ or ‘replay’ watermark up with the 9 logo. Makes a big difference (to me at least).
‘Channel change’ warnings need to be more prominent.
All in all though, it was a good effort. If you can provide 2 FTA channels with near 24/7 coverage, free live streams of every sport and a premium option with 4k, it’s hard to be too critical.
Generally speaking, I think Nine did a brilliant job televising the Paris Olympics, and some of the criticisms they have copped (e.g. using a cricket commentator for diving, and a former AFL star for equestrian, delayed events etc.) will only spur them to improve when they televise the LA Games in four years’ time.
The time zone will be a challenge, though; when a day’s action gets underway at 9:00am in LA it will be 2:00am on the East Coast (which is 17 hours ahead). What that would mean is that:
during our primetime (7:00pm-midnight), we would only be seeing highlights of the previous day, with the day’s preview show potentially beginning at midnight AEST;
assuming the Opening Ceremony begins at 7:00pm LA time on the Friday evening 14/7, it will be midday on the East Coast on the Saturday 15/7. This could potentially, however, attract a massive afternoon audience but there would still be a gap between the end of the ceremony and the start of Nine News.
subsequently, this means that their primetime would air during our afternoon, and their morning action would take place in our graveyard hours. This will be the second straight Summer Olympics where our sleeping patterns would be adversely affected.
That’s true - at 5:00pm (midnight in LA) they could still air Tipping Point (assuming it’s still on air by then), similar to how Seven continued to air The Chase Australia during the 2016 Rio Olympics, and then straight after ACA they could go straight into an encore/highlights package from the previous day.
I know there’s a separate thread for this, but this is what I think Nine’s LA2028 schedule could look like in its early days:
Saturday
7:00am “Today in LA”
10:00am LA2028 Preview Show
12:00pm LA2028 Opening Ceremony
3:00pm TBA
6:00pm Nine News
7:00pm LA2028 Opening Ceremony replay
10:00pm TBA
12:00am LA2028 Day 1 Preview show
2:00am LA2028 Day 1 - Early Morning (AEST)/Morning (LA)
Sunday
7:00am Today in LA
9:00am LA2028 Day 1 - Morning (AEST)/Late Afternoon (LA)
12:00pm LA2028 Day 1 - Early Afternoon (AEST)/Primetime (LA)
3:30pm Nine’s Sunday NRL (Syd/Bris; on 9Go! in other markets)
6:00pm Nine News
7:00pm LA2028 Day 1 Encore/Highlights
12:00am LA2028 Day 2 Preview Show
2:00am LA2028 Day 2 - Early Morning (AEST)/Morning (LA)
Monday
7:00am Today in LA
9:00am LA2028 Day 1 - Morning (AEST)/Late Afternoon (LA)
12:00pm LA2028 Day 1 - Early Afternoon (AEST)/Primetime (LA)
5:00pm Tipping Point Australia
6:00pm Nine News
7:00pm ACA
7:30pm LA2028 Day 2 Encore/Highlights
12:00am LA2028 Day 3 Preview Show
Good idea, although if they didn’t bother having a proper Today show during the Paris games they may as well just air coverage of live events right through the morning.
We’ll need to see the LA schedule because I’m guess some events will be earlier in the pacific time zone to accommodate Eastern time zone for NBC. Won’t be an exact replica of the structure currently taking place.
I can’t believe they didn’t have the 6pm news, yet still showed Gladiators. But i also find it hard to believe they’d just leave the news out of a promo like this.
I assume the Closing Ceremony organisers provided information to broadcasters because the commentators were describing a lot more about what was happening.
Unlike the Opening Ceremony where they were given no information and the commentators were scrambling to find something to say and in some cases embarrassing themselves.
Today in Paris was the biggest disappointment to me.
Should have had headlines at top and bottom of hour. Should have had live crosses to reporters at venues and covered the news of the games as well as the sporting highlights.
It was disjointed with the throws back to 9
News.
It needed graphics across the bottom of the screen and a clock. NBC managed to do it. And they also had pre packaged stuff inserting their hosts into the city and the fun of the games. We saw none of that on 9.
Hopefully they can do better in LA. I really wanted to love it.
Yet they were given information. The OBS were reading the various descriptions of the segments. The nine crew were not. As other said they may have been too wet or holding the tarp above their heads to read the notes they had.
