Olympic Coverage

Boy did we need the Winter Olympics!
The economy has tanked and our federal and provincial governments have given us a record deficit to contend with.
But you'd never know about the national malaise when watching the games from Vancouver.
It worked, it really worked.
And CTV made a great decision by hiring veteran Brian Williams away from CBC to host the whole shebang. Williams was near word perfect and he got to interview in person a towering array of sports celebrities.
A first there was an ominous mood. A death on the first day darkened the mood. One of the columns in the opening ceremony would not come up. And for the first few days Canadian competitors seemed to be slipping back into our old losing ways.
When Canada lost to Team USA I thought the initial euphoria might fissipate.
Then Alexandre Bilodeaujust nailed hit and his attention to his handicapped brother was touching.
The the gold glowed: Virtue and Moir danced effortlessly to Mahler and captured a nation's collective heart.
And for time to time I switched over to NBC which was rightly concentrating on the triumphs of the Americans. But during the hockey finale the NBC guys were nothing less than gracious. And the end came down to one puck, it was real nail biting time.
On Sunday afternoon I had to slip out for a jug of milk and the streets were eerily deserted.
In ratings terms it was all a big hit for CTV which estimates 99 per cent of the population "experienced" some part of Olympic TV coverage though the CTV Broadcast Consortium.
Will CTV actually make any dough from this? CTV paid a fancy price tag and then came the dip in TV advertising. So who knows?
Now reality must set in. The folks of B.C. will be paying off the costs for years to come.
And come Monday a lot of Canadians will return to searching for jobs.