On January 1st, 2008, the Olympic Channel of CCTV started broadcasting.
CCTV.com News: In order to further strengthen the Olympic concept and create an Olympic atmosphere, a news briefing was held in Beijing on the afternoon of 28th to launch the Olympic Channel of CCTV. It was announced at the meeting that from January 1 to September 30, 2008, the sports channel of CCTV will be renamed as the Olympic channel.
> > > > Click to watch the video recording of the news briefing.
Sun Yusheng, deputy director of CCTV, said in his speech that the launch of the Olympic Channel is an important node, which is the need for CCTV’s Olympic coverage to be further upgraded, and it marks the all-round development of CCTV’s Olympic coverage. To this end, CCTV will build the Olympic channel with the program standards and modes of the Olympic Games.
> > > Full text of Sun Yusheng’s speech: Do the best Olympic coverage.
Jiang Heping, director of CCTV sports channel, introduced that the Olympic channel will be operated in five stages according to the Olympic process in 2008. While maintaining the original characteristics of the sports channel, the following program arrangements will be made.
> > > > Full text of Jiang Heping’s speech: At that time, seven CCTV channels will cover the Olympic Games.
The first stage: January 1 to March 23. In the morning, the Sports Morning Post was completely revised to Hello, 2008, and in the afternoon, the Olympic Games time slot was opened to reorganize the classic games of previous Olympic Games.
The second stage: March 24th to May 3rd. Launch the torch relay report program "Walking with the Flame". This 40-minute program focuses on the relay of the Olympic flame abroad and Everest. At the same time, the "Beijing 2008" series will be adjusted. At this stage, the Olympic channel will focus on several time nodes: March 24, the fire ceremony in Olympia, Greece; On March 30, the fire handover ceremony at the marble stadium in Athens; On March 31, the torch arrived in Beijing; On April 30th, the countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was 100 days. At the beginning of May, the Olympic flame passed into Mount Everest.
The third stage: May 4th to August 7th. The Olympic Channel adds a special program "Walking with the Torch" every morning, noon and evening, covering the Olympic torch relay in 31 provincial capitals of China. In addition, special time slots have been set up to report the preparation and promotion of Chinese athletes and the important events before the Olympic Games. It is the first time in the history of the Olympic Games that the torch relay will pass through all 21 overseas cities and 113 domestic cities on TV.