The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and TSN plan to broadcast a combined 450 hours of Sydney Olympic coverage. CBC Sports will broadcast 18 hours of live coverage each day (totaling more than 30 hours) and CBC Newsworld will provide hourly highlights. TSN will air nine hours daily of Olympic Games events.
Making it a more secure Olympics. Major venues at the Sydney Olympics are now being searched by more than 600 anti-terrorist police, soldiers, bomb disposal experts, divers and sniffer dogs. It’s a final security check before the Games and is expected to last three weeks and culminate in all three Olympic precincts being officially “locked down”.
It’s finally coming together. A new system that delivers Olympic tickets to a person’s home was off to a “terrific start”. About 117,000 of 144,000 ticket deliveries were made last Sunday, the first of five delivery days. And about 20,000 red cards were delivered to ticket buyers not at home, explaining where and how the tickets can be picked up. Two thousand staff member are involved in loading, sorting and delivering tickets using 200 trucks and vans, as well as more than 100 warehouses are being used around the country. And more than two million tickets remain on sale through ticket offices, a telephone call centre and over the Internet.
It will be the biggest telecast in history, with more than 800 cameras in service at 35 competition venues for a record 19 days. The Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organisation will have an up-to-the-minute studio and will work out of the International Broadcast Centre, the central node of a brand-new system with 4,800 kilometres of optical fibre, 30,000 phone and fax lines, 3,200 audio links, 280 video links, the capacity for 60 private cable TV channels and 15,000 mobile phones. Perhaps the most memorable technical treat will be something from Israeli computer company Orad, that lets viewers see, in the form of a moving green line on the screen, the pace a swimmer, a runner, and a kayaker needs to match a world record.
A tent city housing a group of Aborigines located in Sydney’s Victoria Park has grown to about 25 tents. The Aborigines say they hope to fill the downtown park with peaceful protesters during the Olympics. Meanwhile an Aboriginal group has formally applied for police permission to march to Sydney Airport in the five days leading up to the Olympics. The group also officially notified police it would like to march on the Sydney office of Prime Minister John Howard on September 15, the day of the opening ceremonies for the Games.
Bruce Maguire, who is vision-impaired, told a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission hearing that he wanted the same access to the Sydney Olympic Web site as the “rest of the globe”. Maguire, who first complained in June of 1999, told the commission he wanted the Games’ organizers to make additions to the program which runs the Web site so that his computer could read and translate all information into Braille. Organizers claim there’s no time to make the official Sydney Web site accessible to everyone. Results of the hearing are expected some time next week.
An athletes’ village housing 15,000 athletes and coaches from 199 nations, that will soon become one of Australia’s largest cities, was unveiled recently. The athletes will live two-to-a-room in about 1,000 apartments and houses, but some multi-room apartments will house up to 20 athletes and coaches. The rooms have twin beds, extra-long mattresses, and one bathroom for every four athletes. Towels will be changed every two days and sheets changed every four days. Although there is no kitchen, the living room has white plastic lawn chairs and a small table. The athletes are expected to eat in a huge communal dining hall. The village will have its own newspaper, a gym that holds up to 375 people, a massage-therapy centre, and a “body centre” that will offer free “ant-stress” treatments. After the Olympics and the Paralympics, the village will be converted into a suburb called Newington. About 70 per cent of the houses have already been sold at prices up to $385,000.
Local talent will be used to entertain the 110,00 opening night crowd and billions of Olympic viewers. Popular mainstream singer John Farnham, and Olivia Newton-John will team up. Other performers include pop star Tina Arena, teen idol Vanessa Amorosi, and the official national anthem Advance Australia Fair will be performed by cabaret singer Julie Anthony. More than 3,500 choristers will back up the performers.
I’ll drink to that! Korbel Champagne Cellars and Fetzer Vineyards are now official supporters of the 2000 Salt Lake Olympics and Paralympics, as well as the U.S. Olympic teams competing in the Games from 2000 through 2004. While SLOC’s share will be all cash, the U.S. Olympic Committee will get both cash and beverages. Royalties from sales of Korbel and Fetzer bottles, which will carry Olympic logos, will provide financial support for American Olympic teams through December 31, 2004.
And finally, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) is investigating whether it can cut off paying legal fees to Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, former SLOC bid officials who were recently indicted. Attorneys have been asked to determine if SLOC is contractually obligated to continue its current pay-as-you-go policy now that the two have been formally charged. If the answer is no, the advance payments could stop, but insurance coverage that was recently halted because there was no formal accusation of wrongdoing, would kick in. And if convicted, Welch and Johnson would be obliged to reimburse those costs.
