Curling Down Wall Street

With NBC holding the rights to air the winter Olympic games the network is trying to fit as much of the games in on as many channels as possible. One of the channels that is owned by NBC is CNBC. This channel is focused mainly around Wall Street and the stock market. As soon as the market has closed for this past week NBC began broadcasting an Olympic sport. Most of the time, curling was shown on CNBC. This created a strange phenomenon that many people did not expect. Many of the brokers, bankers and big shots began watching this completely foreign sport. Most people in America do not know what curling is, and definitely could not tell you the rules. This is evidenced by the horrible showing of the U.S. team at the Olympic games. They lost their first four matches and were one of the worst teams competing.
So why is curling so interesting to these Wall Street tycoons? Well in our media class we have been talking a lot about media and how it relates to society. Looking at it, it seems like the marriage between the traders and curling was somewhat of an accident. After a hard day of work and diligently watching the stocks go up and down, the station would change from the high pressure of the stock market to the grace and strategy of curling. Like chess on ice, curling has a very calming affect on the traders who have been under high pressure all day.

This is an example of how media can be a trend setter among certain groups of people. Because NBC put curling on CNBC it became part of a certain group of people's routine and it became something that quickly caught on. Now this is something that will quickly fade. The Olympics are almost over, this means curling will no longer be shown on TV, and with spring right around the corner Americans can once again focus on sports like baseball and football. So while this fascination with curling is clearly not here to stay, it is very interesting to see the fads the media can create. Sometimes by just a strange accident.

Jason

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/business/26curling.html?ref=media