NBC Opens Olympics With ‘Worst Hand Imaginable’

And NBC Sports executives said they were up to the challenge to produce a compelling event.

“The good news, if there is good news, in dealing with live sports in a pandemic, is we have a ton of experience at this point,” said Pete Bevacqua, the chairman of NBC Sports. “Think about the last two years across our portfolio. We have become skilled out of necessity. We saw that in Tokyo, where we had an unbelievably large presence in Stamford.”

Mike Tirico, an NBC Sports anchor, is in Beijing and will host the first few days of coverage from China. Craig Melvin, an NBC News anchor, will be in Beijing as well, along with 600 other staff members on the ground.

But because of China’s Covid-19 restrictions, most of the sports commentators will be in Stamford, part of a crew of about 1,500 people there. And NBC will not have access to many aspects of the Games that viewers are accustomed to: charming travelogue segments about a host city; live shots of an athlete’s family and friends, who have traveled to a foreign country to see a loved one compete; commentators rushing up to a competitor who just scored gold.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/business/media/olympics-nbc.html