ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how CBS successfully sustained, for the first time in US Olympics coverage, a full cast and range of characters in a fairytale melodrama, manipulating story structure, space, and time for full dramatic effect. It demonstrates that how CBS, and as an outgrowth of the network coverage, other mass media storytellers within North America, continually restructured the narrative when the real-life skaters’ behavior or actions were incongruous with CBS’s narrative plan. The top three US television networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, compete every four years for the rights to broadcast the summer and the Winter Olympics, one of ‘television’s most prestigious events’. The chapter analyzes the CBS coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics and focuses specifically on the women’s figure skating competition. CBS sent a production crew of 800 to Albertville for the purpose of negotiating the Olympics discourse.
