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All events live in some form for Olympics on NBC
By RACHEL COHEN, AP Sports Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — NBC's Olympic coverage in London will look very familiar, with one major twist.
For the first time, the network plans to show every event live in some form — even if it's just raw video streaming online. But the prime-time broadcasts will still use that traditional formula of human-interest features and taped competition.
The man behind that coverage will be someone steeped in the NBC philosophy of packaging the Olympics for a wide audience. NBC announced Tuesday that "Today" executive producer Jim Bell would serve in that role for the 2012 Games.
He fills the spot held by Dick Ebersol, who resigned as chair of NBC Sports Group in May. Earlier in his career, Bell was coordinating producer for NBC Olympics under Ebersol.
"That's what our approach on the Olympics has been and what it will continue to be," said Mark Lazarus, who replaced Ebersol atop NBC Sports Group. "Having Jim do that for the Olympics assures we'll have that sensibility."
Except the prime-time programming bearing that sensibility will no longer be the first opportunity viewers have to watch who wins the gold. Ebersol was adamant even as he left NBC that showing events live during the day would hurt overall ratings.
But to Lazarus, the sports fan of today demands immediacy — and that doesn't have to be mutually exclusive to highly stylized broadcasts aired when people are most likely to be sitting in front of the TV.
"I believe in that, and that will be some philosophical shift from my predecessor," Lazarus told The Associated Press.
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Posts I've Made
In Topic: USA 2024
26 August 2011 - 11:30 PM
baron-pierreIV, on 25 August 2011 - 10:27 AM, said:
Stop insulting and devaluing Winter athletes.
Excuse me? You insult and devalue the athletes all the time. If you had your way, there would be NO athletes in the Olympic Games.
Typical Baron, talking out of both sides of his mouth.
In Topic: NBC Retains Olympic rights through 2020
21 August 2011 - 05:50 PM
Quaker2001, on 21 August 2011 - 03:37 PM, said:
I remember reading they were planning to build out a new HD studio at some point a couple of years ago that was going to be HD-ready. Not sure if that ever happened, but to my knowledge, they do not yet send out an HD signal, although I'm sure that's in part because they're a digital sub channel in many locations.
Being a digital sub-channel has absolutely nothing to do with it. UniSports could be HD on cable and satellite, and be SD on the OTA digital sub-channel.
As an aside, all NBC O&O's carry UniSports as a sub-channel.
