NBC supports Toronto Olympic bid WebPosted Thu Sep 14 10:51:41 2000 CBC SPORTS ONLINE - A powerful American television network executive has thrown his support behind Toronto's bid to host the 2008 Olympics. Dick Ebersol, the head of NBC Sports and its Olympics coverage, cites Toronto's geographic position -- convenient for American broadcasts-- as the main reason for his support. "You want a live prime-time Olympics, having it in a time zone that's the same as the majority of your country is certainly a very positive thing," explained Ebersol. With Sydney 15 hours ahead of North America's Eastern time zone, NBC has decided to air the Games tape delayed in American prime time. According to Ebersol, NBC's tape-delay strategy was necessary, in order to recoup the Games exorbitant cost through prime-time advertising dollars. NBC, which according to Ebersol paid $705 million US for the rights to Sydney broadcast 84.5 hours of programming prime-time programming. Cable affiliates CNBC and MSNBC will bump-up the network's total coverage to over 200 hours. The CBC and TSN will carry almost 500 hours of coverage, most of it live. While behind the Toronto bid, Ebersol said that because his network has already paid for the 2008 Games, it has little clout to influence the IOC's decision. CBC Sports broadcaster Brian Williams agrees. According to Williams, NBC would be more influential if they were still in negotiations to buy the rights to the 2008 Games.
