INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

Scholars are divided in their assessments of the influence of
television over the presentation of the Games and the communication
of the ideals of Olympism. Unlike Brundage, Michael Payne,
Marketing Director of the IOC, is effusive in his praise of the impact
of television has had: “The growth in the prestige and standing of the
Olympic Movement can be directly attributed to the development of
television in the twentieth century … Television has been a great
friend and ally of the Olympics” (Payne, 1996: 305). Kidd (1989,
1992), too, has noted that television has served one of the aims of
Olympism by bringing the Olympic Games to a far wider audience. “It
has ensured ‘the widest possible audience’-one goal of the Olympic
Charter-for the Games” (Kidd, 1989: 1-5).
The potential negatives for the Olympic Movement associated
with this relationship, however, are not lost on Kidd. He notes that he
is “concerned about the domination and manipulation of Olympic
meanings-values, received history, and significance of events-by the
concentration of corporate interests which has come to be known as
the ‘sports media complex’” (Kidd 1989: 1-6). Gruneau (1989a,
1989b) suggests that sport telecasts are designed to present athletic
contests in as dramatic a way as possible to accumulate audiences for
advertisers, while at the same time “winning consent for a dominant
social definition of sport ideally suited to a capitalist consumer
culture” (Gruneau, 1989a: 152).
Yet, this “sport-media complex” is not monolithic, and the
complexity of international Olympic broadcasts challenges the notion
that “one single ‘meaning’ were [sic] generated by the event” (Puijk,
2000: 311). The meanings of Olympism become further contested in
the interplay between host and local broadcasters. As Silk (2001) has
observed-in the context of the 1998 Commonwealth Games-local
broadcasters can use the host feed to serve their own national interests.
Indeed, in their research on the 1992 Barcelona Games, Morgas Spà,
Rivenburgh, and Larson found that
… an alarming number of broadcast presentations of Olympic
values were both narrow and sparse-and in a few broadcasts
absent altogether…Of those values articulated by broadcasters
those of participation and peace were most prevalent with
international friendship following third. Beyond that, however,
there was no sense of obligation displayed on the part of
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