Beijing planning on being friendly to US TV audiences

BRITISH viewers may have to stay up all night to watch some of the most glamorous events in the Beijing Olympics because of plans to stage them at times suitable for US television.

In a controversial move, NBC, the American network, has requested that the swimming and gymnastics finals should be staged in the morning in China.

Such a decision would upset both the competitors, who usually are at their physical peak in the evening, and also European TV companies, angered that the proposed timing would mean that they would be forced to screen the events live in the early morning.

I can’t remember such a thing ever happening before, but it makes sense for NBC to try. They invest a massive amount of money in the Olympics, and viewership is falling, at least partially because results are so easily accessible online. When 8pm rolls around much of America already knows who’s won.

Chinese fire high ranking Olympics official

Oh those crazy Chinese. Liu Zhihua was fired because of corruption and leading a decadent life:

A terse report Monday by the state-run Xinhua News Agency said Beijing Vice Mayor Liu Zhihua’s “wrongdoings” were “quite serious” and merited his removal Sunday.

[…]

In its brief statement, Xinhua didn’t directly link Liu’s sudden dismissal with his work coordinating the construction of the 31 venues in the Beijing area. It said only that Liu, a 57-year-old Communist Party official from Liaoning province in the northeast, was sacked for “corruption and degeneracy.”

A Hong Kong daily newspaper with close ties to Beijing’s rulers, Wen Wei Po, said Liu maintained several mistresses and built a personal entertainment center, replete with closed-circuit television cameras, in the outlying Beijing district of Huairou. It said Liu took “large sums” in bribes from foreign businessmen, and later denied them land that he had promised. The foreigners then complained to the Communist Party’s Central Disciplinary Committee, the party’s highest organ for investigating corruption, the paper said.

Liu had been seen in public as recently as May 29, when he went to the site in the Beijing district of Fengtai where laborers are erecting a softball stadium.

He was in charge of city planning, construction, transportation and all sports activities.

In a sign of the case’s sensitivity, censors purged any commentary about Liu’s firing from Internet chat rooms.

Olympic fundraising

This is a fascinating article dealing with the ways Beijing is coming up with the money for the 2008 Summer Olympics:

Enterprises from both home and abroad are jockeying for positions on different rosters connected to the Games, in the hope of marketing their products and enhancing brand awareness through this extraordinary opportunity.

It is not only corporate titans, but also Olympic officials who have are keeping a close eye on the bottom line, especially since costs have soared in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

“Without the support of the business community, without its technology, expertise, people, services, products, telecommunications, its financing - the Olympic Games could not and cannot happen,” says IOC President Jacques Rogge of the importance of Olympic marketing.