London 2012, and the winner is…

Jim Marshall on why TV has never been more powerful or more intimate: Now that the BBC has proved TV’s credentials during the Olympics, it will be fascinating to see whether Channel 4 can continue this during the Paralympics, but this time with ads…

To be honest, initially I was far from convinced that the Olympics were going to be so wonderful.

The prospect of heavily disrupted traffic, London inundated with tourists and wall to wall coverage of nothing but the Olympics on the Beeb didn’t fill me with excited anticipation.

And of course the serious threat of a terror attack didn’t help… and there must have been one, otherwise why were banks of missiles situated on Blackheath and other locations around London, including in people’s back gardens?

Although I did perk up when the North Korean football team was introduced with the South Korean flag – it could have resulted in a devastating diplomatic incident and even full scale hostilities, but fortunately a major incident was averted. It did, however, result in a fabulous tactical ad from Specsavers the following day.

I didn’t watch the opening ceremony and felt vindicated when it was announced that Boris Johnson had been moved to blubbering during the event. I felt this was an inappropriate response from someone I’ve always regarded as being ‘half old Etonian and half wild man of Borneo’, unless he was getting in touch with his Liberal Democratic side, maybe prior to a push for the leadership of the coalition.

So I announced that I would be watching very little of the Olympics, apart from the obvious blue ribbon events. For the first few days I didn’t. However my resolve was destroyed on the first Tuesday when I found myself watching the culmination of the clay pigeon shooting event – on paper something I wouldn’t normally even describe as a sport.

For some reason I became transfixed watching Peter Wilson competing against, among others, a nervous but fancied Russian (obviously KGB trained), a tubby Swede, who clearly had a long history of eating much of what he’d shot, and a large and sinister looking Hungarian, who looked like the archetypal baddy from an Agatha Christie novel and who I half expected to turn his gun on the other competitors at any time as he fell further and further behind.

Our man Peter Wilson of course won and I felt as exhilarated as my colleagues who I had been watching with. Very strange! I’ve got no interest in shooting and had never heard of Peter Wilson before – and will probably never hear of him again.

Then it dawned on me. This is what the Olympics is about. Yes of course it was about Usain Bolt, Mo Farah, Bradley Wiggins, Jessica Ennis and the other sporting superstars. But it was as much about and, arguably even more interestingly, the competitors who had trained for their lesser known/more eccentric events with the same passion, commitment and focus.

And then it struck me who/what was the overall winner of London 2012. Not the competitors, not the organisers, definitely not the politicians (in spite of the joy Boris generated in a clown like way, particularly as he dangled on a wire in front of bemused camera clicking tourists) and not even the great British public.

No, for me the overall winner and hero was good old TV. My fellow columnist, the much-respected Greg Grimmer, suggested that, of the media, the BBC was the gold medallist. At first I agreed and then, as is my want, I didn’t. I think the overall gold medallist was TV, or more specifically digital TV.

In fairness to Greg, the BBC did a wonderful job, but they could also be accused of being lucky – lucky that Team GB did so well after a sticky start, lucky that the spirit of the games caught the public’s imagination, lucky that there were no disasters (natural or otherwise) and most of all lucky that they are publicly funded, which took all of the commercial risk out of the depth of their coverage.

Arguably ITV could never have taken that level of risk. In defence of the BBC, they have been incredibly progressive in the development of their digital services, which provided the basis for their whole approach to the coverage. Showing the blue ribbon events was easy, but what really made it was all the other stuff: from Mr Wilson winning the double trap shooting to Mr Dong Dong winning the trampoline (how couldn’t he with a name like that?).

Also, from the cycling team in the Velodrome, with their skin tight suits, space age helmets and fabulous ‘fantasy’ thighs to the mad BMX riders ricocheting of each other at ridiculous speeds; and from the sheer delight of Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hosking winning in the rowing (who’d heard of them before the Olympics?) to the sheer delight of Andy Murray winning in the tennis (who hadn’t heard of him?).

And what the TV also consistently captured was that all the competitors were genuine and decent people in the way they both competed and then spoke after their events – a bit of a contrast to other sports at the moment, with Tiger Woods hurling away his driver, the ECB and Kevin Pietersen involved in a petulant spat and footballers continuing to exchange a bit of banter with the odd profanity or two (hundred).

Another commentator has said that London 2012 was the first truly ‘social media Olympics’. Again, I sort of agree with this, though not necessarily in the way that it was meant, but on the basis that the Olympics showed that TV has transformed itself from not just a broadcaster of major events but also now a social medium in its own right.

In my view, TV has never been either more powerful or more intimate. Now that the BBC has proved TV’s credentials during the Olympics, it will be fascinating to see whether Channel 4 can continue this during the Paralympics, but this time with ads. I have a sneaking suspicion it will.