NBC Adds Cable to ’92 Olympics Coverage

NBC announced a joint venture Thursday in which some of the 1992 Summer Olympics will appear on cable TV on a pay-per-view basis.

But NBC Cable President Tom Rogers, aware of concerns by NBC’s more than 200 affiliated broadcast stations and Olympics advertisers, emphasized that the new pay-per-view cable operation won’t duplicate the Olympics telecasts of the NBC television network.

“This isn’t intended to be duplicative,” he said. “It’s intended to be complementary and to offer an alternative in terms of the types of events and length of coverage that can be devoted to those events as compared to what network television does.”

He said the pay-per-view telecasts, in which viewers must pay a fee beyond their normal cable bill to see the event being offered, will provide “much more in-depth coverage of specialized (events) that network coverage just doesn’t allow for.”

NBC did not specify what events would be carried on cable.

On Dec. 1, NBC paid a record $401 million for rights to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. At that time, it said cable participation would be needed to help defray the costs.

There had been speculation that NBC might air part of its Olympics on its new cable service, Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC), which is to begin operations April 15. But CNBC won’t play any part in NBC’s Summer Games telecasts, Rogers said.

The Barcelona Games will be the first Summer Olympics to be seen partly on cable TV. CBS, which bought rights to the 1992 Winter Games for $243 million, hasn’t yet decided whether there wil1814061669telecasts of those Games at Albertville, France, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

NBC’s pay-per-view Olympics plans are part of a three-pronged joint venture with Cablevision Systems Corp. of Woodbury, N.Y., with which NBC said Thursday it had signed a letter of intent.

Sources close to the deal said NBC agreed to pay Cablevision $137.5 million for its share of the venture. By NBC’s estimate, the total combined operation is worth $300 million.

Under terms of the deal, NBC will:

--Jointly operate with Cablevision the new pay-per-view Olympics operation, whose telecasts, Rogers said, will be offered to the entire cable industry.

--Jointly manage with Cablevision a new SportsChannel America cable program service for regional and local sports.

--Buy 50% of Cablevision’s interest in Rainbow, a Cablevision programming division that offers special-interest programming.

NBC will continue to manage CNBC, its new business and sports cable program service. That company is based in Ft. Lee, N.J., across the Hudson River from NBC’s headquarters in mid-town Manhattan.