| This dissertation explores the political, cultural, economic, and industrial uses to which U.S. broadcast television networks put the Olympic Games from 1960 through 1988. From 1956, when the Melbourne Games bypassed network distribution through syndication, the major broadcast networks have used ownership of exclusive Olympic rights to build and to shape viewing audiences, to attract advertising dollars, and to fulfill or to satisfy governmental initiatives, policies, and doctrines. During the period examined, the networks used the Olympics to experiment with and refine narrative techniques and technological innovations, to establish and maintain corporate identities, and to assert their legitimacy and responsibility as stewards of the public airwaves by contradicting critics who alleged that the television industry was unwilling to provide "quality" programming. As the networks' dominance began to wane with the expansion of cable and satellite television, the Olympics became an even more highly-valued television property that helped the broadcast networks retain their prominence within the industry.; Drawing on television industry sources and Olympic archives as well as popular sports journalism, this dissertation addresses critical gaps within the fields of television studies, media history, and sports studies. Conducting a detailed examination of the tensions and pressures that encouraged the networks to emphasize and rely upon the Olympics, the work suggests the centrality of sports programming in general, and the Olympics in particular, to the establishment, growth, and maintenance of broadcast television networks. Neither marginalizing sports because they fall outside the neat categories of news or entertainment, nor oversimplifying the networks' motivations as solely economic, this dissertation highlights the need to understand the networks' deployment of sports as an integral part of their development, transforming the Olympics from a collection of events largely unfamiliar in the U.S. into a national and global spectacle. |
