Have We Really Embraced “The Start of an Exciting New Journey”?: A Content Analysis of the Olympic Channel’s Original Series

After the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Olympic Channel was launched on 21 August, which is a multi-platform media providing a wide range of content about the Olympics in order to promote the Olympic spirit throughout the world, including games, news, originals series, and live sports events. Compared with videos, the other part of the Channel, those from the original series could represent the coverage tendencies of the platform more relevantly. Based on framing theory, this research focused on issues of sports and analyzed 653 Original Series videos from 21 August 2016 to 31 December 2017, aiming to explore if the coverage framework the Olympic Channel constructed is distinct from what traditional Olympic media adhere to. The study found that some tendencies of the coverage of the Olympic Channel vary from traditional sports media. First, the most-mentioned five sports in the Channel (track and field, skiing, swimming, basketball, and gymnastics) are different from those in traditional sports media (gymnastics, track and field, swimming, diving, and volleyball). Second, the Olympic Channel emphasizes more on promotion of the Olympic humanistic spirits rather than competition, which is valued in traditional sports media, and the Channel implements the promotion greatly by telling characters’ stories, with nearly 60% of those characters which are non-Olympic champions, including coaches and sports instructors involved in Olympic movements. Third, the Original Series records athletes in a documentary way, with the shooting perspectives extended from ordinary athletes’ performance insides the domain, to their multiple identities’ outsides the field, conveying the images of athletes vividly and solidly, narrowing the gap between athletes and fans. In terms of gender, however, male athletes and men’s sports (46.3%) have superiority of media coverage over females and female sports. Coverage focuses placed in these two genders were found distinct as well—male athletes are endowed with more opportunities to show their athletic abilities and games experiences. As for the of athletes’ nationalities, it has not been completely free from the stereotypes of traditional Olympic coverage yet—developed countries account for almost about 70% of the coverage while less than 24% is of developing countries. Such unbridgeable gap will lead the perception of sports among countries imbalanced with different economic levels and may eventually have the promotion of Olympic spirits uneven. The Olympic Channel is the International Olympic Committee’s first step to change the media environment, attempting to secure the young generations’ understanding towards Olympic spirits. Placing the overall amount of coverage in a global context, how to enable the Olympic Channel as the primary medium for young people globally to embrace the Olympic spirits requires International Olympic Committee (IOC) to focus more on the content and propensity of the Channel. Not only a transformation of Olympic media format, but also the “decentralization” of Olympic cultural is needed, just what the significance of the Olympic Channel’s establishment lies in.