NBC sports honcho Dick Ebersol previews the top story lines going into the 21st Olympiad.
By Tom Brokaw
Dick Ebersol, 62, the longtime chairman of NBC Sports and co-creator of Saturday Night Live, has produced television seen by more Americans than any other man alive. In 2008 he rejuvenated the Summer Olympics as a ratings powerhouse, and in 2009 he produced the most-watched Super Bowl, between the Steelers and Cardinals. Now come the 2010 Winter Olympics, the 11th time he’s been a part of their broadcast since 1968, shortly after he dropped out of Yale to become a researcher for the late TV pioneer Roone Arledge. Ebersol spoke with his NBC colleague and family friend Tom Brokaw over lunch at the Four Seasons Grill Room in New York.
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What are you looking forward to?
Vancouver is going to be particularly fun because it represents the first time in the history of the Winter Olympics that the American Winter Olympic team is the best team in the world. Remember back 30 or 40 years ago when you and I were kids? We would be lucky if we won one or two gold medals in the Winter Olympics. Now one of our cross-country skiers is the best cross-country skier in the world. All of our skaters — everybody is at the top of the world right now. That’s never happened before. Second of all, for American television viewers these will be live Olympics. It’s a whole different experience when it’s live, as we saw what happened with [Michael] Phelps’s swim live from Beijing.
Do you need a Phelps for the ratings?
Most of all you need competitive American teams no matter what. In Vancouver, there are a couple of athletes who will potentially give us a saga: Lindsey Vonn, who is the two-time reigning world female skiing champion. She is going to ski five times over the two weeks, and she legitimately is the best in the world for four of the five disciplines. And then there are two speedskaters: Shani Davis, from Chicago. He’s the best speedskater in the world. And then Apolo [Ohno], who skates every six days. So those unfold nicely as potential stories.
How about the Flying Tomato, Shaun White?
Shaun’s like family because he and my youngest, Willie, became fast friends on a flight back from Turin and then ended up traveling the world together. His main event is the sixth day of the Olympics, and I wish there were a way I could chop it up and make it multiple days. A sponsor of his, Red Bull, built him this snowboard pipe at enormous expense outside Silverton, Colorado, just for him to train on. He just went there and learned all these tricks. He’s so far ahead of everyone else, but he determined he had to go even further.
You’ve often run personal stories about the athletes, but lately people have criticized these profiles.
One of my chief lieutenants said to me after Sydney: “You did one too many of them, and they’re too long, but more important there is too much emphasis on the weepy side of these profiles.” I thought about it for a month, and I came to the conclusion that he was right. So I really put my mind to how I can keep the story elements, but keep them shorter. But if we don’t do this, why would anybody in Des Moines care about somebody who is about to run a particular event?
Who was tougher to deal with as a TV producer: Bode Miller or John Belushi?
I’ve often been asked if I’ll ever write a book, and I steadfastly say I won’t, and the reason I always give is John. The stories I could tell about John — the night he almost burned down my house, or the night he did burn down [Saturday Night Live co-creator] Lorne [Michaels]’s wife’s apartment in New York — I mean, those are the things people would want to read. But I don’t want to go [further] because John was a great guy who took really good care of his friends. With Bode, I don’t have any personal relationship. He’s the greatest American male skier of all time. And he is definitely entitled to say whatever he wants. But my advice to him is, if he continues to not care about the Olympics, then he shouldn’t go to Vancouver. He should stay home and watch the Olympics — on NBC.
What broadcasting innovation are you most proud of?
It isn’t a piece of machinery or anything technical, but the “Megaseg,” which I came up with to address the biggest hump to get over in our Olympics broadcast, which happens around 11 o’clock when everyone goes to bed. What I did was stagger the commercials so that beginning at five to 11 we can go without a commercial break for 25 or even up to 50 minutes — that way the viewers never stop watching. It really ends up being a gift for the people who’ve stayed with us up to that point, because you get to see the night’s ultimate events without interruption.
Is there one Olympic performance that stands out in memory?
Michael Johnson winning the 200 in Atlanta — that really got us all out of our chairs. It’s not just that he smashed a record that everyone thought was unbreakable; it’s that we had a camera on a track that captured his real speed for the first time. That was exhilarating. It was the performance of a generation.
How much do you worry about terrorism now?
I worry about it less in Vancouver, and that’s probably a mistake. It seemed like such a natural thing to worry about in Greece five or six years ago, being so close to the Middle East, but I don’t think you can feel safe anywhere. But the IOC makes it their number one priority.
You’ve been at this for 42 years, but you still get juiced. Ever wonder why?
More than anything else it goes back to the 1968 opening ceremony in Grenoble, France. It was in a temporary stadium with a lot of mud around, and I spent most of the show on my knees, and I couldn’t see very much because I had to keep handing cards out to Jim McKay. When I did get my few glimpses of that ceremony, the thing that jumped into my mind and never left was that this was the most exciting place in the world. It’s the best of the world all gathered in one place. It gives you a sense of, “It could all work.” And so it starts with that.
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This article originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of Men’s Journal
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