The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 48

AVAlUUUJ F4 The Vancouver Sun. Tuesday, Feb. 9. 1988 TV OLYMPICS Continued from page one 33 jt i Known as point-of-view these miniature devices can give the viewer a frightening sense of being in a puck's firing line or hurtling down an icy track at 70 miles an hour. At the speedskating oval at the University of Calgary, a tracking, camera will glide along one wall to keep pace with the athlete.

Another, will shoot from the ceiling. Super Slow Motion: This extremely expensive camera ($400,000 US) shoots video at three times the normal speed. Tape is then played back more slowly, and the presence of triple the number of images eliminates the jerky movement evident in standard slow-motion equipment Four such cameras will be used in Calgary. Pushing the limits of technology has its problems, though. The progressive miniaturization of circuits and lenses has permitted tiny cameras to be installed on moving objects, but sometimes the moving object a skier, say will balk at adding any weight to his body when Olympic success or failure is differentiated by fractions of a second.

Chances are, the dazzling ride viewers share on their screens will have been taped earlier during a practice run. Also, the tremendous internal pulls exerted by gravity and centrifugal force on the inner mechanisms of cameras riding the bobsled run can wreak havoc on the picture. Signal blackouts are not uncommon during the hairier turns. 1... forward leap at each Olympic Games," says Joe Roizen.

president of Tclcgcn, an California consulting company for the industry. The games' enormous worldwide audience brings out the best in the technical people," who tend to pull out their fanciest tricks every four years. Some of the tricks e'll sec in Calgary: A track similar to a miniature railway line will be built part-way around the inside of McMahon Sta 1 ABC helicopter delivers one of network's 300 cameras to Calgary. CTV's Ralph Mellanby will treat the Games as entertainment, and It you don't like It, too bad. dium, site of the opening and closing ceremonies.

The track will support a rolling camera that will focus on the last runner with the Olympic flame. It will give the TV watcher a view he couldn't possibly have without jogging backward just ahead of the torch bearer. Cameras of a different design will be installed in unusual places, such as a hockey net or attached to fast-moving athletes downhill skiers, bobsledders and luge competitors for instance. and competition times have been slotted to mesh with peak TV viewing. When all the athletes show up, they'll be outnumbered two to one by television personnel.

No one knows yet how many people will watch these Games around the world, but the figure two billion has been tossed around by Phyllis Switzer, managing director of CTV And just wait 'til you hear the Games riTff 7 viewers of the I Calgary Games will be treated to the most sophisticated use of natural sound in the history of televising winter sports. Microphones will pick up the hoosh of a slalom skier hundreds of metres away from a camera, the slap of a hockey puck against a goalie's pad, and the pop of a ski jumper at the point of takeoff. "In some cases you will literally be able to hear a competitor breathe because of this extensive and sophisticated audio we will be using." says Roger Goodman, coordinating director of ABC Sports' Olympic coverage. At the biathlon, "you will be able to hear the bullets hit the targets." In the men's downhill skiing event, 60 microphones will be used along with 20 cameras lining the course. This Is two to three times the number of mikes previously employed In other winter skiing competitions.

One of the more noticeable effects of all this special miking will be the way It has altered the cadence of TV announcers. Trained for many yean to keep talking to avoid dead air, these Kople have to break that habit cause natural sound fills many of the gaps beautifully. la hot key, special attention has been given to ambient sound at the player's benches and the penalty box, where team members' comments could prove colorful at limes. In addition the thud of Eilayers and pucks slamming nto the boards, and the scraping of skates plowing up the Ice, will be seized and added to the mix. Figure skating has a location known as the "kiss and cry'' area, where competitors wait anxiously for their marks.

Always guaranteed to produce Enod visuals, the area Is now ring mined for audio potential. A "fiohbowl" mike nearby will snoop on spoken comments by skaters or emotional outbursts, for which announcers will be listening eagerly. Host Broadcaster, as the potential audience. CTV has split itself in two for the Winter Olympics, with the host' broadcaster division being responsible for providing complete video and audio to television organizations in 55 countries. This "international feed" is designed to be unbiased coverage of every event at every venue, with no regard to favorites.

While selecting from those 600 hours of live coverage, all the TV organizations including CTV's domestic network will add their own embellishments to make the Olym-pics show special for their audiences. Ralph Mellanby heads the CTV team it's his sixth Winter Games and this job is his biggest Olympics role ever. Mellanby, 53, is known for pulling off good television. Whatever his job description happens to be, he essentially conjures up a vision of what will work on the little screen, and creates it As long as his viewers like it, too bad if others don't Many of those foreign broadcasters have a different notion of sports coverage from their Canadian and U.S. counterparts.

They have even Stories by BOB BLAKEY, Calgary Herald complained, in meetings last year in Calgary, about North American TV's show-business approach to the competitions. In parts of Europe, says Mellanby, TV producers believe the viewers are sophisticated in the ways of skiing, bobsledding and the rest They prefer wide shots of the events, complete ith trees and backs of heads, instead of close-ups of a competitor's sweat But Mellanby will do it his way. "I don't care hether they like it," he says. "We go for the entertainment, the drama. ADC executives are praising Mellanby these days in Calgary.

Compared with ABC, CTV is a small financial player in these Games. The Canadian network paid only $4.5 million for broadcast rights, and will receive about $50 million to set up and run the host broadcaster division planned as a break even proposition. CTV prime-time commercial rates arc averaging $18,500 for 30 seconds. ABC has a lot riding on these Games financially, too. Its $309 million bid was the highest for any Olympics TV rights, and is expected to result in a $20 million to $30 million loss for the network.

To minimize losses, ABC is charging advertisers $265,000 US for prime-time, 30 second spots. But in order to demand that much, the network is guaranteeing bigger advertisers that an average of 21 per cent of the available TV audience will tunc in to the Winter Olympics. Failure to deliver that large an audience will cost ABC a kind of rebate in the form of free advertising time later another possible red-ink swamp of indeterminate depth. "Technology has always taken a PERFORMANCE GOLD MEDAL PROFESSIONALS HOT! We drain your motor oil while It's hotl FASTI We got you In and out In a hurry! SUCK! You get professional, guarantood service! 1 MBIBOMBBINRhBIBJBBMHI Go for MlULUQE. iCVNj SAVE '3 A QR BEST VALUE JL.

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