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Seven awarded for Olympic coverage

Australian Olympic viewers who were vocal in their opinions of TV coverage, could be surprised to learn that the IOC has awarded Channel Seven.

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Australian Olympic viewers, who flocked to Seven’s coverage but were equally vocal in their opinions of it, could be surprised to learn that the International Olympic Committee has awarded Seven a Gold Award for its coverage.

The IOC, which only awards five of its Golden Rings prizes, lauded Seven’s the “Best Olympic Programme” ahead of NBC and the BBC. The award is given for ‘best overall coverage.’

Despite the biggest audiences of the year, the 2008 games were notable for Australians complaining about the quality and consistency of Olympic programming, clearly not an issue with the IOC.

Press Release:
The Seven Network has been recognised by the International Olympic Committee as the leader in the coverage of the Olympic Games.

Seven has been awarded the highest honour – the gold award in the Olympic Golden Rings, a prestigious international competition in which the International Olympic Committee seeks to promote and award excellence in television coverage of the Olympic Games.

The Olympic Golden Rings are awarded by an international jury every two years and were presented in Lausanne, Switzerland overnight by the President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge.
Seven’s gold medal comes in the most highly-contested category – The Best Olympic Programme – recognising best overall coverage of the Olympic Games in Beijing earlier this year. Seven defeated the American television network, NBC (silver Olympic Ring), the BBC (bronze Olympic Ring) and and all other international television networks.

This is Seven’s second gold award in The Olympic Golden Rings. Seven was awarded the Golden Ring for Best Olympic Programme for its coverage of the Olympic Winter Games in Torino in 2006.
Seven’s coverage of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing was the most-watched event in television history – with more than 17.2 million Australians watching all or part of the Games on Seven. Seven’s coverage of the Olympic Games in Beijing was led by Seven’s Head of Sport, Saul Shtein, executive producer, Andy Kay and General Manager of Network Sport Operations, Col Southey.

11 Responses

  1. this was the sporting joke of the year for mine. was saw more of that tivo ad which was false advertising by the way, than we did of live sport. it was [athetic just like their of every other sport they cover. thank god for nin and fox for the next sumer games and winter games. it will be a billion times better than sevens coverage

  2. It was very good coverage, we saw wat we needed to see. U cant expect every event under the sun to hav been broadcast so i think seven did a decent job at providing the vital coverage relevant to Australia.

    Im dreading nines coverage in 2012, what a shoddy schedule thats gonna be. I think seven should be branded as Australia’s only Olympic network

    could it be possible for the IOC to giv seven the rights to 2012?

    congrats seven and heres to a hopeful grab for 2016.

  3. WTF??? Their coverage was rubbish – whom from the IOC was watching Seven’s coverage and judging it? Maybe you could argue that the presentation, commentators etc. were good (this can only be what was taken into account), but the amount of sport they put on, the way they cut between sports and delayed coverage was shocking.

    And if we need any more confirmation that the award must be a joke, Seven was apparently also awarded for their coverage of Turin 2006, when they didn’t even have any live coverage of that event. Most of their coverage was delayed by 12 hours or more, even an Australian gold medal wasn’t shown until about 18 hours later.

    @lee123 – they can’t multichannel in the USA either, but NBC had many channels on pay-tv.

  4. being the 7 fan that i am, even i will say i am surprised. but congrats to them.

    are the rights handed out purely based on money? if they aren’t, 2 worlds best coverages in 3 years would have to push the IOC to give it back to 7 in the future.

    most of the complaints were about Yum cha, the comentators, or something that was out of 7’s hands like the AFL broadcast on inability to multichanel. but i the IOC judge based on, liveness, variety, chinese culture incorporation, and ability to capture the Olympic atmosphere and inspiration. so i guess that is what 7 did right.

    @Ianblair23, networks in aus aren’t allowed to multichannel until 2009 so the IOC obviously took that into account.

  9. There were so many montages, so many so motion shots. It got really irritating.

    As for the ‘win’, channel seven is well renowned for doing anything they can to ‘win’ something, by any means necessary….

  10. This is a joke right. Because there is no possible way that Seven’s coverage of the Games were even close to being recognised as world best.

    Didn’t the NBC have something like eight channels running and I seem to recall that China had anything up to 12 channels! Seven had one and one channel only.

    And what about SBS, what do they get? If it wasn’t for SBS we would not have seen half the events.

    All I can say is thank God that Nine and Foxtel have got the rights for London 2012.

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