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| Friday, July 13 Updated: July 14, 9:45 PM ET |
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| NBC will have to deal with time difference Associated Press | |||
NEW YORK -- The 2008 Beijing Olympics present NBC Sports
with the same kind of time challenge that resulted in low ratings
for last year's Sydney Games.
Beijing is 12 hours ahead of Eastern time in the United States,
just three hours closer than Sydney. NBC dealt with the gap with
Australia by airing the 2000 Games with long tape delays and the
cumulative rating was the lowest in 32 years and 36 percent below
the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
As a result, the network had to show extra commercials to make
up the shortfall in the numbers of viewers that sponsors were
promised their ads would reach.
Asked Friday what the network's plans for Beijing might be, NBC
Sports VP Kevin Sullivan said, "It's premature to speculate on
what's going to happen in seven years."
The network is paying the IOC $3.5 billion for the U.S.
broadcast rights to five Olympics through the 2008 Games.
For the next Summer Olympics, in Athens in 2004, NBC has not
said yet what might be aired live or on tape. February's Salt Lake
City Winter Games will have a mix of taped and live coverage,
though everything will be shown on tape-delay on the West Coast.
NBC believed its audience was smaller for Sydney in part because
those Olympics were in September; Beijing's will be in the summer,
when NBC figures more people would be apt to tune in.
NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol was in Moscow for Friday's
International Olympic Committee vote which awarded the 2008 Games
to China.
"We offer our sincerest congratulations to Beijing on being
selected to host the 2008 Games," Ebersol said in a statement
issued in New York. "The Olympics will now be opened to an
entirely new part of the world where one-fifth of the world's
population can experience the world's greatest event for the first
time."
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