Olympics on YouTube by Martina Janeckova

International Olympic Committee announced that clips and highlights of Olympic events will be available on the video-sharing site YouTube. Timo Lumme, IOC director of television and marketing said that “the IOC’s priority is to ensure that as many people as possible get to experience the magic of Olympic Games and the inspirational sporting achievements of the Olympic athletes.” Limited online coverage was available to few territories for the Athens 2004 Olympics and the 2006 Turin Winter Games. Now for the first time in Olympic history IOC will have complete global coverage. The IOC’s channel will be available at www.youtube.com/beijing2008 but will be blocked within each territory served. Online pictures and reports will be available in 77 territories in Africa, Asia and Middle East. The IOC channel will be offering 3 hours per day to viewers which will be a compilation of all day’s highlights and it will start on August 6. The Games open officially on Friday 8. IOC said it wanted to attract the young viewers. The average age of viewers for the 2004 Games in Athens was over 40 and shows no signs of falling. Jon Tibbs, a public relations executive said that “the Olympic Games are not that credible or relevant to most young people in the developed or developing world.” Young people have a wide range of sport, music, entertainment media to choose from and the Olympics doesn’t mean nothing special to them. But if the Games loose their prestige, billions of dollars from sponsorship and broadcasting rights could fade away. The IOC expects to earn $2.5 billion from broadcasting deals in the 2005-2008 period.

by Martina Janeckova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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edited by Beata Biskova