ESPN.com - OLY - NBC will have to deal with time difference

 
Friday, July 13
Updated: July 14, 9:45 PM ET
NBC will have to deal with time difference



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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