The Olympic media dossier

1968: Mexico City

12-27 October
Television
US network ABC paid $4.5m for television rights to the Mexico event—three times as much as for the Tokyo Games—but transmitted 44 hours of coverage, compared with only 14 hours that NBC showed from Tokyo. (The payment for the Winter Games at Grenoble was $2.5m for 17 hours.) ABC's particular motivation for acquiring the rights was to attract audiences to the promotions for its other programming, to raise its position of ranking third among three networks.

Ampex HS-100 video disc recorder with slow motion and stop-action facilities was used for first time by ABC during the Games.

Film
The 2½-hour official film  is available on video.