NBC-TV announced yesterday that it would offer around-the-clock coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games from Athens on seven platforms and total 1,210 hours. It will also cover all 28 Summer Olympic sports for the first time ever.
The network said coverage on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo and Telemundo, plus an NBC High Definition platform, will offer the most in-depth Olympic programming ever. The 1,210 hours NBC will broadcast from Athens is more than the combined total of 1,133 hours broadcast from the last five previous Summer Olympics—Sydney, Atlanta, Barcelona, Seoul and Los Angeles.
Telemundo’s Spanish-language broadcast will provide the first exclusively non-English language Olympic broadcast in U.S. television history. The 169.5 hours in Spanish on Telemundo is nearly equal to the 171.5 total hours of coverage on NBC from Atlanta just eight years ago.
The Games run from Aug. 13-29, but NBC’s coverage will begin with USA. vs. Greece in Women’s Soccer on Aug. 11 and Iraq vs. Portugal in Men’s Soccer the following night.
NBC paid $793 million in 1995 for the rights to broadcast the 2004 Games, and said last week that it has reached 85% of its $1 billion ad sales goal.
Also, during a conference call yesterday, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics Chairman Dick Ebersol said that the network’s coverage of the 2006 Winter Games from Torino, Italy, will be broadcast in HDTV.
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