NBC Sports Chair Dick Ebersol said yesterday that he
had "not demanded that schedules" of the Sydney Games be
altered "to let the network carry track and field live in
prime time," according to Richard Sandomir of the N.Y.
TIMES. Ebersol: "This country invested $10 billion into
these Games, which makes [NBC's] $705 million look small.
We had absolutely no flexibility in our contract." IAAF
spokesperson Giorgio Renieri, whose organization controls
the track and field schedule, said, "There's been no request
from NBC, and we wouldn't change anything." Meanwhile,
Ebersol "continues to be bitter at the news media's
comparison of NBC's taped broadcast" with that of the CBC's
live broadcast. Ebersol: "I don't gain anything by
criticizing CBC, but ... every four years, people write
about the CBC and don't follow up with its business results,
which are a disaster. When 100,000 people out of 32 million
people watch, it's a disaster. It's just a fixation by
editors, who are playing some game. Actually, I love the
whole CBC thing. I find it so stupid" (N.Y. TIMES, 9/26).
WHILE ON HIS FAVORITE SUBJECT: CBC's primetime average
Olympic audience through Saturday is 1.4 million, down 15%
from Atlanta in '96. In Toronto, Chris Zelkovich notes the
numbers "are slightly below what CBC promised advertisers,
but the network isn't worried about having to air freebies
to make up the difference" (TORONTO STAR, 9/26).
EBERSOL ONE-ON-ONE: Ebersol tells NEWSWEEK's Mark
Starr, "I don't have any doubt in my bones that airing these
Olympics entirely on tape was the right thing to do."
Ebersol: "I'm thrilled with what's coming out of the venues
here in terms of television production. And I'm proud to
send back what we're sending. I just think the ball game's
changed a little bit. And so we're off 15 to 20 percent."
Ebersol, on complaints that NBC's coverage has an "American
bias": "I'm sick and tired of reading we're jingoistic when
we're the only ones in the world who produce 140 profiles
and more than half of them are on foreign athletes."
Ebersol said the network has tried to focus on the quality
of its athletes profiles: "You basically have to have gone
through a real life-threatening experience for your health
to become part of a feature anymore" (NEWSWEEK, 10/2 issue).
