• by Paul Gough , February 5, 2003

NBC announced Wednesday around-the-clock coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games, an effort that will involve a number of GE’s cable channels and accounts in two languages.

The network claims the 806-plus hour coverage will be the most Olympic coverage ever on American TV, double the coverage of the summer games from Sydney, Australia, in 2000, and four times as much coverage as the Atlanta games.

“We are committed to showcasing the athletes of the U.S. and the world in a way that has never been seen before. We will deliver the Olympics to the widest possible audience and give American TV viewers an unprecedented array of choices,” said NBC Sports & Olympics Chairman Dick Ebersol.

The coverage will also include some coverage of every Summer Olympic sports and for the first time include two new GE properties, Telemundo and Bravo.

“We will touch every Olympic sport over the course of the Athens Games,” he said.

The NBC network will have 225 hours of coverage over the 17 days of the games, which open Friday, Aug. 14, 2004. NBC will televise the games from 12:30 p.m. – 4 p.m., 8 p.m. – midnight; 12:35 a.m. – 2 a.m. and replay primetime coverage between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.

MSNBC will televise Olympic action from 2 a.m. – 4 p.m. CNBC will broadcast the Olympics from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. Bravo, which was not part of NBC cable channels during the last Olympics, has a hefty schedule as well: It will offer coverage from 9 a.m. – noon and 4 p.m. – 8 p.m., and will replay MSNBC coverage from midnight to 6 a.m.

Telemundo will offer 134 hours of coverage between 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. every day. NBC said it’s the first time in the U.S. that the Olympic Games have exclusive coverage in a language other than English. Telemundo will also have coverage of the preliminary soccer matches Aug. 11 and 12.

Ebersol said Telemundo’s coverage will open the Olympics to a much wider audience.

“The addition of Telemundo allows us to distribute the Olympics to a wider and more diverse audience than ever before. The Hispanic audience is both the largest and fastest-growing ethnic minority in the U.S., but the vast majority of the audience traditionally has not watched the Olympics,” he said.

MSNBC is also offer pre-Olympic coverage of the soccer preliminaries.

In 2000, MSNBC’s coverage of the Sydney games was tonic to the network’s ratings. MSNBC delivered triple-digit increases over its normal delivery in a comparable time period (0.7 average rating compared to a 0.2 average rating). CNBC saw double-digit increases, from a 0.3 average rating to a 0.5 average rating.