Next year's 2008 Olympic Summer Games from Beijing will be available on various NBC Universal platforms in the US for 3,600 hours. The company is calling it "the most ambitious single media project in history."
The Beijing Olympics begin one year from today (8/8/08). According to NBC Universal Sports & Olympics Chairman Dick Ebersol, the 3,600 hours of coverage, including lots of broadband video streaming for the first time ever, will be highlighted by NBC primetime coverage that, despite the 12-hour time difference, will include live swimming, gymnastics and beach volleyball competition. One way to look at the unprecedented amount of coverage is that NBC Universal will provide 212 hours of video per day, or about eight days per day. By comparison, NBC Universal calculates that the last 12 Summer Olympics, back to the 1960 Rome games on CBS through the 2004 Athens games on NBC, have generated 2,562 hours of US TV coverage.
NBC, USA, MSNBC and CNBC will all provide coverage from Beijing with high definition coverage on NBC's HD affiliates, USA HD and Universal HD. Spanish-language Olympic coverage will be seen on Telemundo. Online, Olympic fans will have access to approximately 2,200 total hours of live streaming Olympic broadband video coverage on NBCOlympics.com. In addition to the 3,600 total hours of coverage, NBCOlympics.com will also feature approximately 3,000 hours of Highlights, Rewinds and Encores. NBC Universal said it will be detailing its wireless "On-the-Go" coverage in coming months.
