Olympic broadcasters appear to get their way

Three weeks after Canada's CBC News announced that it had re-secured permission to broadcast live from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics, more announcements have come out indicating that BOCOG is moving toward giving games broadcasters more freedom to report in Beijing this August.

This Wall Street Journal report says an agreement was reached Wednesday that will allow broadcasters to air coverage live from Tiananmen from 6 to 10 a.m. and from 9 to 11 p.m. The agreement also will allow NBC, CBC and others to "roam freely with satellite trucks around Beijing and other cities co-hosting the Games," according to the Journal.

For those of you who like to count things, NBC, the network that owns Olympic rights for the U.S. market, will carry 2,900 hours of Olympic coverage. According to math whiz and USA Today reporter Michael Hiestand, "Those live hours, spread across NBC and its cable TV outlets, top the total U.S. TV hours — 2,562 — for all previous Summer Games combined."

NBC will be distributing programming across its stable of channels, including Oxygen (female-oriented), MSNBC (business-focused) and Telemundo (Spanish broadcast). It will be using the Olympics as a test ground for new media, experimenting with updates and broadcasts via mobile and online platforms. U.S. Olympic coverage has historically been loaded with heartwarming profile stories that can frustrate die-hard sports fans who would rather watch actual games than a tearjerker piece about an athlete's childhood. Maybe all this coverage will allow viewers to see more of what they want.

Also announced, and of more interest to those of us on the mainland, CCTV's Olympic channel says it will air its coverage without its usual 30-second delay, so it can coordinate with global feeds.

Link: NBC's Olympic broadcast schedule

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