To work out what the core business of an organisation is, the axiom is ‘follow the money’. From this we learn that Google is an advertising agency, Microsoft is a purveyor of office equipment and MacDonalds and Starbucks are both estate agents1.
This makes me wonder what the core reason is for the Olympic Games, since whilst Team GB will be sending 313 athletes to the games, Team BBC will be sending 437 staff. Naturally, the figure is mildly unfair since each of the althletes will be joined by a support team of at least a coach and a fitness trainer, but it’s still a stunning number of BBC representatives.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the BBC and a big fan of the Olympics (can’t wait for London!), but I think this is starting to go a bit overboard. Normally for these kinds of events, the country responsible for the games would generally provide footage to worldwide broadcasters, who would syndicate the content, add their own commentary and decide on their own programming schedule. This is the case in Formula 1 and Tennis coverage. For practical reasons it must be the case for the stadium events at the Olympics.
Assuming a vast number of broadcasters from countries competing in the Games will be sending their own teams of sports reporters, there must be well in excess of two or three thousand media workers headed for Beijing – while the footage will be coming from China Central Television, who are apparently devoting 3,000 reporters to the Games themselves.
What the hell will all these people be doing?!
(hat-tip A. Tory)
- Just don’t apply this logic to political parties – who knows what you might find [↩]