THE ATHLETIC’s Jason Jones noted rapper Megan Thee Stallion is “joining NBC Milan Cortina Creator Collective and YouTube to go behind the scenes” at the Milan Cortina Games. Megan will have “access to Olympic athletes at various venues,” and her content “will be available on her YouTube channel.” It is the “latest and most extensive connection with the Olympics” after she filmed a commercial prior to the 2024 Paris Games. Megan’s participation “adds to the crossover between sports and popular culture,” while offering an “alternative way for fans to engage with the winter sports” (THE ATHLETIC, 2/10).
FEATURED COMMENTATORS: In Anchorage, Nathaniel Herz wrote analyst Chad Salmela and Gold Medal-winning cross-country skier Kikkan Randall will be “featured this month as commentators on NBC’s national Olympics broadcast” -- though “rather than being on site in Italy, they’ll be working out of an office complex in Connecticut.” The setup will be an “improvement over” the 2022 Beijing Games, when the “broadcasters were at the same complex but sealed into individual booths connected by plexiglass windows.” It also is the first time cross-country skiing will have Olympic commentary from “announcers who are working consistently together in the leadup to the Games.” Randall said, “An underappreciated role of the TV product is how it builds kids’ dreams of being future champions. This can actually be an important piece of developing our pipeline for the future” (Anchorage DAILY NEWS, 2/8).
COMMERCIAL CRITICISM: The GLOBE & MAIL’s J. Nestruck noted CBC/Radio-Canada received “approximately 1,180 complaints” about the “avalanche of advertisements during CBC’s broadcast” of the Milan Cortina Games. CBC Head of Public Affairs Chuck Thompson noted that the network “aired 31 minutes of commercials and Radio-Canada ran 30 minutes of ads during the opening ceremony.” Nestruck wrote perhaps that average “may be accurate over four hours of coverage,” but it does “not in any way represent how frustrating it was for Canadians who tuned in at the start of the actual ceremony live from Italy” (GLOBE & MAIL, 2/10).
