On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 10:19 AM, David Lynch <[email protected]> wrote:
> Official announcement is at 2:00 ET, but the AP and the New York Times > are both reporting it. > > Will be curious to see if an Ebersol-less NBC effort is any more > watchable than the ones with him at the helm where. > I think this is surprising (which is another way of admitting that I was wrong). I will be very interested in hearing the details of the NBC deal, and of the competing offers by ESPN and Fox. AP is reporting that NBC got a "four-games deal through 2020 worth more than $4 billion". The story calls this a record, though from what I can tell the last deal was for the 2010 and 2012 Olympic Games for $2 billion (see http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/sports/olympics-nbc-s-olympic-run-is-extended-to-2012-with-2-billion-bid.html), which seems to also be at the average of $1B per Games level (or, I guess more accurately, $2B per Summer+Winter Games level). I don't see how either ESPN or Fox thought it would get the games by underbidding the last deal, even given the economic problems, so either they were not serious players, or Cabletown is offering something else too (in the last deal GE signed up for serious sponsorship of the Olympics as well - I guess we might be getting a lot of cable tv ads). I was hoping to see what ESPN would do with the Olympics, and had hopes that they would cover them more as sporting than entertainment events. That may have been part of the problem - as I am pretty sure ESPN would not have agreed to tape delaying events for US time zones (at least, they would not have agreed to not report the results live on their own air, even if the events were being shown on tape delay in prime time). One of the benefits of these Olympic deals for NBC Sports is that it gives them a huge perk to dangle in front of top shelf broadcasters who otherwise might not be interested in joining the network with its rather flimsy line-up of prime sports events. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
