Jingle of the idiot box rings million dollar tunes

will screen 3,400 hours of action.

The swing illustrates the hold television has taken of the Games, which since 1960 has looked to TV for the majority of its revenue.

US television alone now pays eight times more than the $101 million it paid for rights to the 1980 Moscow Games and overall broadcasting fees have generated $1.318 billion for the Sydney Olympic Organising Committee (SOCOG).

The Games were first televised in 1948 when the BBC

said it broadcast 64 hours and 27 minutes to 80,000 TV sets within a radius of 50 miles of London, with an estimated half million watching each broadcast.

The first real debate on the subject was in 1956, in Cortina, Italy, when the executive board suggested the IOC should study television’s role in the Games.

The reaction of then IOC president Avery Brundage was quick. “The IOC has managed without TV for 60 years, and believe me, we are going to manage for another 60,” roared the American.

It was a blinkered reaction from an American businessman whose own country’s television networks, financed by advertising, were beginning to pay big sums to transmit live ice hockey, basketball and American football.

The penny finally dropped when the American network CBS

offered $1,178,257 for live coverage of the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and $50,000 for the Winter Games in Squaw Valley.

But it came as a shock to the IOC when Squaw Valley said it had to keep all the money to pay costs and Rome would only hand over $50,000.

The IOC was forced to accept the offer which was raised to $130,000 in 1964 for the Tokyo Games and $20,000 for the Innsbruck Winter Games.

By 1971 the IOC was in great need of cash and living on its advances so the New Zealand TV executive Lance Cross was given the task of starting negotiations for the 1976 contract.

But in 1973 it was feared the American companies were thinking of getting together to push down the prices.

In fact, rivalry between American networks has sent broadcasting fees spiralling with NBC

spending $1.948 billion on Olympic coverage since 1980 and committing itself to another $2.845 for the Games of 2004 and 2008.

NBC

sold $680 million of advertising for the 1996 Atlanta Games and says it expects to sell nearly $1 billion in advertising for the Sydney Games.

When it became clear the IOC would collect only $3,500,000 from the $46 million spent on the 1976 Games of Innsbruck and Montreal, the IOC decided to raise its own cut.

The IOC now says the first million dollars goes entirely to the IOC, which gives one third of it to the International Federations and National Olympic Committees.

Of the second million dollars, one third goes to the organising committee and two thirds to the IOC, which gives two ninths each to the IFS and NOCs.

Two thirds of the third million dollars goes to the organising committee, one third to the IOC, with two-ninths to be shared by the IFS and NOCs.

Since June 1995, the IOC has struck deals worth more than $5.1 billion in TV rights fees with broadcasters from the United States, Australia, Japan, Central and South America, the Middle East and Europe through to 2008.

The last 12 years have also seen the rapid growth of marketing money with a dozen multinationals putting $50 million each into the Olympic pot.

Cash raised from broadcast rights, sponsorship, licensing and ticket sales for the Sydney Games is expected to hit a record $2.6 billion.

The Sydney organisers will get $1.8 billion with the rest going to the IOC, National Olympic committees and international sporting federations.

It is not entirely clear just how much money the IOC has but according to its own website current and non-current assets come to $176 million with a further $358 million in bank deposits and TV rights installments held in trusts.

It proudly claims to have spent $120 million on coaching schemes through its Olympic solidarity programme in the last four years.

And for the Sydney 2000 Games, the 28 Summer Olympic Sports federations will split $161.2 million from television and marketing into five categories.

Athletics, as a category one sport, gets $17.668 million.

Cycling, football, gymnastics, basketball, volleyball, swimming and tennis get $8.168 million.

The Category Three slice is $5.168 million — rowing, equestrian, handball and hockey.

Category Four: 4.168 million each — baseball, boxing, canoeing, fencing, weightlifting, judo, wrestling, modern pentathlon, softball, table tennis, archery, sailing, badminton and shooting.

And Olympic newcomers triathlon and taekwondo get $3.668 million each as Category Five sports.