Oh, NBC

The media view from Washington, courtesy of D.C. bureau chief John Eggerton.

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/1/2010 5:52:00 PM

I will admit this is the kind of epiphany that comes to someone watching the Olympics while recovering from five hours of Hill hearings on Comcast/NBCU and the vetting of FCC filings on microphone licensing, court documents and the like, but I have come up with a theory for why Canada is raking in the gold medals. It has to do with NBC’s coverage.

As of Feb. 25, our neighbors to the north had claimed eight gold medals (with possibly one more in hockey), eight more than it had won in a Winter Olympics on its home turf.

Maybe it wasn’t quite owning the podium, but Canadian athletes are doing the home country proud in the bling department, almost as though there were some special magic in that national anthem so familiar to American hockey fans as the prelude to the drop of the puck in iconic NHL rivalries.

Well, there is. I think the reason Canada has found its Olympic mojo in front of the home crowd and NBC’s ever-present cameras is the NBC Olympics opening theme—it starts with the same six notes as Oh, Canada.

I don’t think there will be any plagiarism issues, as there apparently were between 1920s novelty song Yes, We Have No Bananas and Handel’s Messiah. If not, perhaps a new tradition would be to weave the home country anthem into the TV anthem for the coverage.