NBC's Bid For TV Glory

By Richard Zoglin

Television has long been the tail that wags the Olympic mastiff. But the 1988 Summer Games may mark the first time it has wagged an entire national time system. Three years ago, while preparing to sell TV rights to the Games, South Korean Olympic officials realized that the rights would be worth more if the country's clocks were moved forward one hour -- thus enabling more daytime events to be seen in prime time in the U.S. Result: last year, for the first time since the 1960s, South Korea instituted daylight saving time.

The larger implications of such media diplomacy may be a bit scary, but the TV show it has helped create promises to be a stunner. Despite the 14-hour time difference between Seoul and New York City, fully three-quarters of NBC's planned 179 1/2 hours of coverage over the next fortnight will be live. When the telecasts begin each weekday at 7 a.m. EDT, it will be 9 p.m. in Seoul, the peak of the evening competition. When evening coverage starts, at 7:30 EDT, it will be 9:30 a.m. in Seoul, just as the daytime events are getting under way. South Korean Olympic officials have helpfully scheduled the finals of many popular events -- including gymnastics, diving and boxing -- for the morning and early-afternoon hours so they can be seen in the U.S. in prime time.

These and other events will be conveyed halfway around the globe by an array of new TV faces -- or, more precisely, old faces in new roles. The Seoul Games will be the first televised in the U.S. in 16 years that will not be presided over by Jim McKay and the other familiar mainstays of ABC Sports. Thanks to a bid of $300 million for the rights, NBC is getting its first crack at an Olympics since the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan. (Before the U.S. withdrew, NBC was scheduled to televise the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow.)

Thus Today's Bryant Gumbel, instead of the redoubtable McKay, will be this year's Olympic superanchor. NBC Sportscaster Bob Costas will handle late-night coverage, and Newcomer Gayle Gardner, brought over from ESPN, will co-host much of the daytime broadcasts. Among the veteran NBC hands who will be working their first TV Olympics are Charlie Jones, covering track and field, Marv Albert on boxing and Dick ("Oh my!") Enberg for gymnastics. There will even be new theme music from the ubiquitous John Williams.

NBC's cast and crew are acutely aware that they have a tough act to follow. "It's like a new actor taking over another actor's role," says Anchor Gardner. No drastic departures from ABC's successful formula are planned. NBC has rounded up the required roster of former Olympians -- Gymnast Mary Lou Retton, Swimmer John Naber, High Jumper Dwight Stones -- as expert analysts, and is preparing taped features similar to ABC's "Up Close and Personal" reports. "I think ABC has done a great job; we hope to do a great job too," says Michael Eskridge, NBC's executive vice president for the Olympics. "When you get right down to it, there are only so many ways to skin a cat." NBC officials have discussed, however, downplaying one oft criticized feature of ABC's Olympic coverage: the sometimes excessive home-country boosterism. Says Eskridge: "Everybody will do his best to keep our people from becoming a rooting section."

Technically, there will be no major innovations at the Seoul Games. These will be the first Olympics telecast in stereo, and, as at the Winter Games in Calgary, several tiny cameras will be mounted in unlikely spots -- at the top of the bar during the pole-vault competition, for example. NBC's biggest technical feat, however, will simply be to get the whole shebang ready in time. Problems started in February, when the network's 60,000-sq.-ft. broadcast center in Seoul was completed -- six weeks late. Network crews have been working hectic twelve-hour days to make up time ever since.

At full strength, NBC will have a force of 1,100 staffers. At their disposal: 1,000 video monitors, 100 cameras, 154 tape machines and two pagoda- shaped anchor booths. Working out logistics with the South Koreans was made tougher by language and cultural differences, though NBC assuaged its staffers with tours of the Demilitarized Zone, pizza runs and egg days (bring your own eggs and have them cooked to order American-style).

Will it all be worth it? To NBC, almost certainly. The 1,750-odd minutes of advertising time is virtually sold out (at an average $330,000 for a 30-sec. spot in prime time), and the network is projecting an overall prime-time rating of 21.2 -- higher than the 19.3 garnered by this year's Winter Games but less than the 23.2 ABC drew four years ago in Los Angeles. If that goal is reached, NBC stands to make an estimated $50 million to $75 million on the telecast. Though the network has no insurance per se, its contract with the Korea Exchange Bank guarantees reimbursement for revenues lost because of any substantial disruption of the Games. As for the disruption of South Korea's clocks, the country will return to standard time on Oct. 9, a week after the Games end.

With reporting by Michael Shapiro/Seoul and William Tynan/New York