The Olympic Games have been broadcast on television since the 1936 Summer Olympics.
1930s
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 games, held in Berlin, Germany, were televised by means of closed circuit television to various viewing halls. Broadcasts of the Games were made available in more than two dozen halls in Berlin, Leipzig and Potsdam and the Olympic village.
1940s
1948 Summer Olympics
The BBC provided coverage of the 1948 Summer Olympics on their television service, live from Wembley Stadium and the Empire Pool. Coverage was mainly limited to the London area, but could be picked up as far away as the Channel Islands in certain conditions.
1950s
1956 Summer Olympics
Television service was introduced to Australia in time for the 1956 Games in Melbourne. International broadcasting institutions present were BBC, CBS, NBC, Eurovision and United Press. These Games were the first time broadcasting rights were sold.
1956 Winter Games
RAI introduced the first Winter Games coverage ever, and the first Olympic one extended to an international audience. The broadcasts were relayed live via Eurovision to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
1960s
In England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, ITV covered the Summer Olympic Games in 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980 in addition to the BBC. An industrial dispute prevented coverage of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics but the Games returned to ITV screens in 1988, sharing the coverage with Channel 4 - Channel 4 showing the overnight and breakfast coverage with ITV covering the daytime action as well as broadcasting early evening highlights programmes. The 1988 Olympics were the last time that the Games have been shown on ITV with subsequent Olympic Games being shown only on the BBC. ITV only broadcast the Winter Olympics in 1968.
1960 Winter Games
CBS paid $50,000 for the right to broadcast the games in the United States, and this marked the first time the Olympic Games were televised there. Also, officials, unsure if a skier had missed a gate in the men's slalom, asked CBS if they could review a videotape of the race. This would be the impetus and inspiration for CBS to develop what would come to be known as "instant replay."
1960 Summer Olympics
CBS paid $394,000 ($ in ) for the exclusive right to broadcast the Games in the United States. This was the first Summer Olympic games to be telecast in North America. In addition to CBS in the United States, the Olympics were telecast for the first time in Canada (on CBC Television) and in Mexico (through the networks of Telesistema Mexicano). Since television broadcast satellites were still two years into the future, CBS, CBC, and TSM shot and edited videotapes in Rome, fed the tapes to Paris where they were re-recorded onto other tapes, which were then loaded onto jet planes to North America. Planes carrying the tapes landed at Idlewild Airport in New York City, where mobile units fed the tapes to CBS, to Toronto for the CBC, and to Mexico City for Televisa. Despite this arrangement, many daytime events were broadcast in North America, especially on CBS and CBC, the same day they took place.
1964 Summer Olympics
The Tokyo 1964 games were the first to be telecast internationally. The games were telecast to the United States using Syncom 3, the first geostationary communication satellite, and from there to Europe using Relay 1, an older satellite which allowed only 15–20 minutes of broadcast during each of its orbits. Total broadcast time of programs delivered via satellite was 5 hours 41 minutes in the United States, 12 hours 27 minutes in Europe, and 14 hours 18 minutes in Canada. Pictures were received via satellite in the United States, Canada, and 21 countries in Europe. Several broadcasters recorded some sports from Japan and flown over to their countries.
TRANSPAC-1, the first trans-Pacific communications cable from Japan to Hawaii was also finished in June 1964 in time for these games. Before this, most communications from Japan to other countries were via shortwave.
1968 Winter Games
Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy won three gold medals in all the alpine skiing events. In women's figure skating, Peggy Fleming won the only United States gold medal. The games have been credited with making the Winter Olympics more popular in the United States, not least of which because of ABC's extensive coverage of Fleming and Killy, who became overnight sensations among teenage girls.