Turner Broadcasting will not bid on television rights to the Olympics in 2010 and 2012 because it could not guarantee the required amount of coverage on a broadcast network.
The remaining bidders are incumbent General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC and Telemundo), News Corp. (Fox, FX and Fox Sports Net), Viacom (CBS, MTV, Spike TV) and the Walt Disney Co. (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN News).
Turner Broadcasting, a division of AOL Time Warner, had been preparing a bid that included some programming elements on the WB Network, along with many hours on Turner cable networks TNT and TBS. But what Turner was contemplating would not have met the International Olympic Committee's requirements for number of hours and total reach across the United States on a broadcast network, said David Levy, the president of Turner Sports.
"As we got the final guiding principles that came to us, the definitions and parameters they put on over-the-air programming requirements made it a little too difficult for us to bid," he said.
The IOC is seeking an all-encompassing media deal with a single rights holder that will include Internet, broadband and all other rights to sound and moving images from the Games.
Levy said that as it prepared to make a bid, Turner Sports took the lead but other divisions of AOL Time Warner got involved, and dollar values were attributed to various pieces of the business beyond traditional television. He said broadband and pay-per-view were key revenue drivers in the package the company considered proposing.
Levy said Turner never had talks with CBS regarding a joint bid. CBS had passed cable rights along to Turner during the Winter Olympics in 1992, 1994 and 1998.
The remaining bidders will make sealed offers to the IOC on June 6.
