Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Thus Today's Bryant Gumbel, instead of the redoubtable McKay, will be this year's Olympic superanchor. NBC Sportscaster Bob Costas will handle late-night coverage, and Newcomer Gayle Gardner, brought over from ESPN, will co-host much of the daytime broadcasts. Among the veteran NBC hands who will be working their first TV Olympics are Charlie Jones, covering track and field, Marv Albert on boxing and Dick ("Oh my!") Enberg for gymnastics. There will even be new theme music from the ubiquitous John Williams...
...NBC's cast and crew are acutely aware that they have a tough act to follow. "It's like a new actor taking over another actor's role," says Anchor Gardner. No drastic departures from ABC's successful formula are planned. NBC has rounded up the required roster of former Olympians -- Gymnast Mary Lou Retton, Swimmer John Naber, High Jumper Dwight Stones -- as expert analysts, and is preparing taped features similar to ABC's "Up Close and Personal" reports. "I think ABC has done a great job; we hope to do a great job too," says Michael Eskridge, NBC...
...there will be no major innovations at the Seoul Games. These will be the first Olympics telecast in stereo, and, as at the Winter Games in Calgary, several tiny cameras will be mounted in unlikely spots -- at the top of the bar during the pole-vault competition, for example. NBC's biggest technical feat, however, will simply be to get the whole shebang ready in time. Problems started in February, when the network's 60,000-sq.-ft. broadcast center in Seoul was completed -- six weeks late. Network crews have been working hectic twelve-hour days to make up time...
...full strength, NBC will have a force of 1,100 staffers. At their disposal: 1,000 video monitors, 100 cameras, 154 tape machines and two pagoda- shaped anchor booths. Working out logistics with the South Koreans was made tougher by language and cultural differences, though NBC assuaged its staffers with tours of the Demilitarized Zone, pizza runs and egg days (bring your own eggs and have them cooked to order American-style...
Will it all be worth it? To NBC, almost certainly. The 1,750-odd minutes of advertising time is virtually sold out (at an average $330,000 for a 30-sec. spot in prime time), and the network is projecting an overall prime-time rating of 21.2 -- higher than the 19.3 garnered by this year's Winter Games but less than the 23.2 ABC drew four years ago in Los Angeles. If that goal is reached, NBC stands to make an estimated $50 million to $75 million on the telecast. Though the network has no insurance per se, its contract...