BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : TripleCast Sales Remain Woefully Short of Projections

With only hours to go before NBC and Cablevision Systems Co. launch their Olympics TripleCast event, the partners are dramatically short of their subscriber goals.

As a result, NBC stands to lose more than $100 million.

A random survey of cable systems shows that NBC has not significantly added to the 60,000 subscribers that it announced had purchased the TripleCast as of 10 days ago. That is only 2.4% of the total audience NBC projected it needed to break even.

In Cincinnati, Warner Cable’s 183,000-subscriber system had logged only 350 orders as of Thursday and is expecting a total of 500 by Sunday, one-third of its original projection.

A spokesman said customers are very price-sensitive now and that $125, plus tax, is simply too much--even for a full 15 days of three-channel, round-the-clock, commercial-free coverage.

In some cases, local cable systems are not making it easy for customers to order the TripleCast even when they want it.

Century Cable, for example, which serves Santa Monica and other parts of Los Angeles, is requiring customers to visit a local Century office with a personal check and pick up the “trap” that decodes the TripleCast signal. Century says it lacks the capability to accept credit- card billing.

“The last day has shown some increased interest, but it’s still way below 1% of our market,” said Bill Rosendahl, vice president and general manager of Century.

NBC paid $401 million for the TV rights to Barcelona and allotted $100 million to the TripleCast. In addition, it cost another $100 million for TripleCast promotion and production costs.

To recover the $200 million, assuming a 60-40 split between the partners and local cable operators, NBC-Cablevision needs more than 2.5 million customers at $125 each.

Most observers say they won’t get half that many, but it is acknowledged that most pay-per-view buying occurs in the last day or two before an event.