Olympic Preview: The Living Room Games, Up Close and Personal

Shortly before Thanksgiving the wagon train loaded up and started rolling. Twenty 60-ft. trailers spent nearly a week lumbering more than 2,800 miles, from the streets of Manhattan to a cavernous warehouse next to the Saddledome near downtown Calgary. Their cargo: 640 tons of gear, including a mobile studio and two fully equipped video control rooms, to be set up for ABC-TV's coverage of the Winter Olympics. A scant five days after the Games end, the whole traveling broadcast center will be torn down and shipped out to make way for an auto show. But over the next 2 1/2 weeks,...