NBC Nears Sellout on Winter Olympics Ads

NBC has sold about 90% of its available commercial time for its broadcasts of next year’s Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, network President Randy Falco said.

The General Electric Co. unit is charging about $550,000 for a 30-second advertisement during the Olympics, Falco said. NBC hasn’t cut rates in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, even though the tragedy and the slowdown in the U.S. economy have prompted some marketers to postpone buying network advertising.

NBC’s advertising sales for the Salt Lake Games are progressing at about the same pace as those for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Although ratings for the Sydney Games fell to a 32-year low, NBC made an undisclosed profit on its taped broadcast.

The network’s prime-time coverage of the Salt Lake Games, which will run from Feb. 8 to 24, will be broadcast live everywhere in the United States except the West Coast.

NBC is scheduled to show 165 1/2 hours of Olympic programming from Salt Lake City. Its sister cable networks CNBC and MSNBC will televise an additional 208 hours of the Games.