NBC Olympics Coverage: Eight Days a Day

The Beatles struck recording gold with the song “Eight Days a Week” but NBC Universal is taking things to a whole new level with 212 hours a day of Beijing Olympic coverage next summer. It will present more than 3,600 hours of coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the most ambitious single media project in history and more than the combined total of every Summer Olympics ever televised in the United States.

The Beijing Olympic Games will begin one year from tomorrow, August 8, 2008, with unprecedented around-the-clock coverage and, for the first-time ever in the U.S., live streaming Olympic broadband video coverage. The announcement was made today from Beijing by Dick Ebersol, Chairman, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics on the eve of the celebration marking one year to the Beijing Olympic Games.

Over the 17 days of the Beijing Games (Aug. 8-24, 2008), NBC Universal will present more than 3,600 hours of coverage highlighted by NBC in primetime which will feature live swimming, gymnastics and beach volleyball, despite the 12-hour time difference from the U.S.’s eastern time zone to Beijing.

The 3,600 hours is 1,000 hours more than the total coverage for every televised Summer Olympics in U.S. history. Note: Dating back nearly 50 years to CBS in Rome in 1960 (20 total hours) through NBC in Athens in 2004 (1,210 total hours), the 12 Summer Olympic Games broadcasts have totaled 2,562 hours.

In fact, NBC Universal’s coverage will average nearly 212 hours per day for 17 days – more than eight days of coverage during every single day of the Olympics.

The more than 3,600 total hours of coverage from Beijing triples the previous record of 1,210 total hours of coverage on NBC from Athens in 2004, is 20 times more than the 171 total hours on NBC from Atlanta in 1996 and 180 times greater than the 20 total hours for the inaugural U.S. Olympic broadcast on CBS from Rome in 1960.

ON-AIR: NBC Universal’s 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 NBC Universal’s Telemundo.