Ebersol Out at NBC Sports

Reported first by The New York Times, head of NBC Sports, Dick Ebersol, has decided to resign.  Ebersol, who has run NBC Sports since the late-80s was unable to agree to terms on a new contract with new management as he negotiated his first deal since the merger of NBC and Comcast.  His decision is curious because Ebersol was widely-expected to wield even greater power with the merger of the two titans, especially because many of the executives at the post-merger department are holdovers from NBC Sports. 

This is germane to Sochi how, exactly?  Well, I know a thing or two about burying a lead but the real story here is that this comes just weeks before the IOC auctions off the rights to broadcast the Sochi Olympics.  Networks can bid on Sochi 2014, Rio 2016 or a package deal that would include those two plus the 2018 and 2020 Games, which have yet to be awarded (you can see the status of 2018 bids on the invaluable www.gamesbids.com).  NBC has broadcast the Summer Games since Seoul in 1988 and the Winter Games since 2002 in Salt Lake.   As ESPN reports, the IOC is looking to exceed the $2.2 billion they got from NBC in the last deal.

Interesting stuff, if for no other reason than Dick Ebersol has had as big an impact on the way sports are presented than anyone not named Roone Arledge (the guy who thought up Monday Night Football).  NBC now presents the Olympics on about 37 channels domestically (give or take) and shows more live coverage than ever before.  In fact, as renaissance man Peter Uberroth notes in that ESPN story, Ebersol has defined the Olympic Movement over the last 30 years as much as anybody.  In fact, I would say that he's had an impact that is surpassed only by former IOC director Juan Antonio Samaranch's. 

As NBC's impact on sports in the US has receded over the last decade or so (really, other than Sunday Night Football, name an NBC Sports broadcast you watch), they really hitched their wagon to the Olympic brand.  Interesting to see how it turns out for NBC...

So, Uh, It's about that Time

1,000 days to go until the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics!  Hard to believe, I know, but you'll forever more be able to keep track thanks to the official countdown clock of the 2014 Winter Olympics, brought to you by OMEGA.

More interesting than clocks, of course, were the events that commenced across the country to mark the celebration:

The city of Sochi and the whole of Russia celebrated the milestone with a series of events and festivities under the banner of "The Marathon of 1000 Good Deeds". The main themes of the day were: the environment, healthy living, education, and culture.

Some of the events that took place were:

· "1000 Olympic Lessons" were held at schools in Moscow, Krasnodar, Khanty-Mansiysk and Novocherkassk.

· Moscow, St Petersburg, Omsk, Volgograd, Krasnodar and Novorossiysk hosted a sports festival called "A 1000-Metre Dash Towards the Olympic Games". On top of this, volunteers instigated a huge flash mob called "The Olympic Warm-Up", which saw thousands of people taking part. In Volgograd, the warm-up was led by Olympic champion weight-lifter Aleksey Petrov.

· A "Friendship between People" Festival was held in Moscow, Kazan and Tomsk, to reflect the cultural diversity among Russia's nationalities. Volunteers at Kazan State Technical University organized an immense hot-pot banquet with 1,000 national meals for the public to sample.

· In Tomsk the Sochi 2014 Anthem was performed by 1000 musicians from three combined orchestras.

· Krasnodar, Moscow, and Ufa launched a number of social initiatives for the elderly under the title of "1000 Smiles". In addition, a programme called the "1000 Children's Drawings on Asphalt" was organized, where streets were decorated in brightly-coloured drawings created by children taking part in the event.

· Environmental events and “green initiatives” were held in Vladivostok, Tver, Sochi, Pyatigorsk, and Arkhangelsk. Numerous trees were planted alongside the Olympic avenues, and flower beds were arranged in the figure of 1,000.

· The students from the Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University also climbed to the top of Mount Mashuk, which stands at a height of 1,000m, and cleared its slopes of litter. The students began their ascent of the mountain from five different starting-points, one for each of the Olympic rings. The event also saw the Sochi 2014 Flag planted on the very summit of Mount Mashuk.

So, what's your favorite event?  Personally, I really want to know what an Olympic flash mob looks like.  Did 1,000 people simultaneously pretend to throw a discus?  Also, always excited about the '1,000 Children's Drawings on Asphalt'...just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?  Sarcasm aside, I'm always interested the activities around the "Greenest Olympics Ever;" looks like the Russian authorities participated in their favorite activity to celebrate the countdown: arresting hooligans who stand in the way of progress.

Ecological Destruction Continues in Sochi

Good summary of the current ecological situation in Sochi, from an AFP article I caught on vancouversun.com.  Essentially, it covers the basics: that Russia is saying the gargantuan building project to prepare Sochi is "70%" finished and that this will be the "greenest" Olympics ever vs the Ecological Watch on North Caucasus saying that that ain't exactly the case:

“In general, environmental damage in Sochi is much worse than what we expected in the early stages of construction planning,” said Suren Gazaryan of the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus.

The regional NGO continues to monitor Olympic construction sites after both Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund announced they were withdrawing from the process last year.

“Right now construction crews have no oversight, they simply do what suits them, and this landslide is a good example,” Gazaryan said as he walked along a river in Sochi National Park whose shores have become encrusted with asphalt-like mud.

A mudslide from an illegal dump up the hill tore through the park and filled the river’s banks with debris from tunnel construction and other waste in January.

“Clearly leaving thousands of tons of waste on a steep hillside is not a good idea, but its convenient, and it can’t be stopped,” Gazaryan said as he picked off a chunk of the black substance for testing.

I guess you could classify leaving thousands of tons of waste on a steep hillside as "not a good idea" but, then again, this is the same country that has decided to spend over $30 billion to host the Olympics in the first place.  What I'm saying is that maybe two wrongs make a right and everything will go swimmingly in 2014.  Anyway...it's also never a good thing when, annoyed at the sham that is the never-ending meetings and promises from the Russian government to clean up their Sochi act, the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace have totally divorced themselves from this entire process of working with the government.  When two of the most devoted and tireless baby seal-saving organizations in the world deice that it's not worth it, that's bad, right?

Now, you can read the article yourself for all the gory details and/or visit the EWNC's website/facebook page/search for its vids on YouTube.  One thing I did want to point out, however, is the case of Gayane Antonova, which was touched on briefly in the article and, I think, highlights the difficulties of principled opposition to this project.  Antonova has been something of an outspoken critic of instances of waste/fraud/cutting down centuries-old pine trees.  As the story notes, when she called the local cops out to point out that, you know, Russian Railways had decided to just start laying track on the shore without any permission to do so, the cops hauled her in instead.  The charges?  Using foul language and/or hooliganism.

Fortunately, Antonova was found not guilty by the municipal courts (warning: link in Russian), which is something of a minor victory in a world where principled opposition, um, you know, sometimes gets run over by cars and flees the country.  The story of Antonova (and, again, I would like to reiterate that I am aware the the EWNC is not an unbiased source.  I would also like to reiterate that I am not a journalist.) serves merely to highlight that Russia remains an unsafe place to do business for those who attempt to speak out and who have a platform. 

Sochi Puts English First

Job Alert: According to The St. Petersburg Times (the one in Russia) reports that Sochi 2014 recently hired English First to teach English to potentially 70,000 Russians in advance of the 2014 Winter Olympics.  If that sounds ambitious, well, it is.  Also, if that sounds like one hell of a classroom, well, the paper reports that most of the teaching will be done in virtual classrooms (even though I'm pretty sure I took an undergrad science course with 70,000 students.  I think we only had 3 TAs, but I digress...).  This is Olympics-specific in that the goal is to train volunteers, taxi drivers, athletes, etc; pretty much anybody who might come in contact with foreigners willing to pull their bulletproof vest out of storage and go to the Olympics. 

But, as I've learned from following the goings on in Sochi, it's also part of a wider initiative to develop more English-speaking civil servants in Russia.  There's a movement afoot in Russia make 20% of the current government employees conversational in English, a movement that goes hand-in-hand with the government's plan to make basic English a requirement for all new federal employees as soon as next year. 

Incidentally, there's an 'English First' initiative rearing its head again in the US, though I'm not sure it's in the same spirit.