From The Outside Looking In

Canada's former Olympic network, it would appear, seems determined to find its own way to stay in the Games.
The thought comes to mind as I watch Vancouver Welcomes The World, a preview of the 2010 Winter Games on the CBC — you know, the network that will not be Canada's eyes and ears of the Olympics for the first time in 16 years.
But while we tune into CTV, TSN, Rogers Sportsnet and a host of other channels that form Canada's Olympic Media Broadcast Consortium to follow the many stories of Vancouver 2010 over the next two weeks, our public broadcaster wants you to know it might be bitter about being elbowed aside for this one — but it isn't folding up its tent completely.
The venerable Peter Mansbridge is taking The National to Vancouver for the duration of the Games. CBC.ca has a Toronto-based crew on duty to fill a dedicated Olympic website with stories and photos that chronicle what figures to be the biggest sporting spectacle ever to land in Canada.
Granted, all of this will surely pale compared to the 4,800 hours of television/web coverage the consortium will present from Vancouver (every second of every event live, we're being promised. More on that in a future post). And one might suggest the CBC's presence at these Olympics is merely acknowledgement that this is the story Canadians will care about most while the Games are on — in other words, exactly what we'd expect from our taxpayer-funded public broadcaster.
But still, it strikes me as interesting that the CBC would put in much more than a token effort. After all, there was no shortage of bitterness at the Mother Corp. when the CTV/Rogers consortium snagged the rights to Vancouver 2010 (and London 2012, don't forget) away from CBC, which had aired each of the past seven Olympic Games. And the normal response when you haven't invested a lot of money into such events is to pretty much ignore it (think anybody but NBC is going to go overboard on this south of the border?).
The message here, it would appear, is that while the CBC is gone from the Olympic picture, it hardly intends to be forgotten. Count on them pushing hard to get back in the Games (officially, that is) when the bidding for Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016 begins in the next few years. The question is, with the jewel that is Vancouver no longer part of the picture, how much will the CTV/Rogers gang want to push back?