Athens Games Get Full TV Run

NBC, in concert with three cable networks and, in a historic first, the Spanish-language network Telemundo, plans to air around-the-clock coverage of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, including some live coverage, the network announced Wednesday.

Combined, the five networks will air 806 1/2 hours of coverage, nearly double the hours from Sydney in 2000, which were a ratings bomb, and more than four times the air time from Atlanta in 1996. For the first time, NBC officials said, each of the 28 Summer Games sports will be televised.

The Athens Games mark the third installment of NBC’s $3.5-billion deal to televise the Games in the U.S. from 2000 through 2008. At 806 1/2 hours, its package will test the contention of network executives that the Games bring American families together before the TV screen like no other sports property can.

“We are committed,” NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol said in a statement released Wednesday, “to showcasing the athletes of the U.S. and the world in a way that has never been seen before.”

The Athens Games begin Aug. 13, 2004, and the programming and event schedule, including live broadcasts, remains to be finalized. On NBC, some live coverage is envisioned of night events from Athens -- when it would be afternoon on the East Coast, morning in Los Angeles.

Telemundo, which NBC acquired last year in a $2.7-billion purchase, will air 134 hours of coverage, soccer and other sports, over 18 days -- much of it live. NBC said Wednesday that Telemundo’s Spanish-language service will provide the “first exclusively non-English language Olympic coverage ever provided in the U.S.” to what Ebersol called a “largely untapped Olympic audience.”

NBC’s announcement comes as the International Olympic Committee embarks on negotiations with NBC and four other U.S. networks for rights to the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer Games, perhaps beyond. A key strategy and planning meeting is due to be held Feb. 19 at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The first two installments of NBC’s current five-part deal, Sydney in 2000 and Salt Lake City last year, made money for the network. But each played out differently from the standpoint of ratings and public relations -- an intriguing study in the emergence, and acceptance, of tape-delayed coverage of the Games.

Ratings from Sydney, when almost all of NBC’s coverage was tape-delayed, resulted in the lowest marks for any Olympics, Summer or Winter, since 1968. The average Nielsen rating for the 17 nights of telecasts from Sydney was 13.8, meaning 13.8% of U.S. homes tuned in to the Games. That rating was 36% lower than the Atlanta Games, which NBC also televised.

The Salt Lake Games proved that a taped Olympics need not be a ratings dud.

Those Games were broadcast on tape in Los Angeles and throughout the Pacific time zone. Ratings, even on the West Coast, far surpassed the 1998 Winter Games from Nagano, Japan, which were televised by CBS.

From Athens, a significant amount of cable coverage -- probably hundreds of hours -- will be shown live, in all U.S. time zones. The time difference from Athens to Los Angeles is 10 hours; to New York it’s seven hours.

Telemundo is likely to follow the U.S. soccer team, as well as other soccer teams, and air boxing, basketball and baseball -- with the coverage overwhelmingly live. It begins with preliminary soccer matches Aug. 11.

MSNBC, CNBC and Bravo -- NBC’s three cable networks --will air a combined 447 hours from Athens. NBC recently acquired Bravo from Cablevision Systems Corp. for $1.25 billion.

“In Sydney,” Ebersol said, “we introduced Olympic coverage on MSNBC and CNBC and received extremely positive feedback from viewers of many Olympic sports that were previously largely unavailable to audiences in long form.

“Now, with the addition of Bravo to MSNBC and CNBC, we have the platforms, along with the NBC network and Telemundo, to program all of the Summer Olympic sports.”

But for many viewers, those still most familiar with watching the Olympics as a traditional network event, the issue remains: What will be shown on NBC, and how much of it live? In all, NBC will air 225 1/2 hours from Athens over 17 days, beginning with the opening ceremony on Aug. 13. Its nightly prime-time show will run for four hours -- down from five in Sydney.

Current plans call for NBC to include, at the least, some live coverage of the Games in a segment broadcast from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern and Central time on weekdays, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends in those time zones.

Because of the “Today” show, there will be some delay on the West Coast.

NBC President Randy Falco recently told a trade journal, Broadcasting and Cable, that the network believes such live segments would not threaten ratings for the prime-time package. “We wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the high ratings in prime time that our advertisers have come to expect,” he said.