"We're in extraordinarily good shape," he said. "This is my third Olympics overseeing sales for NBC Sports, and this is the first Olympic Games that we've had a healthy economy. (Huh? DS) Sales have already exceeded the $850 million for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, for which NBC paid $893 million to the International Olympic Committee to buy the broadcast rights."
NBC uses the Olympics to promote its other programming, and new technologies, as Cable Fax reports:
"The Olympics are TV everywhere's moment to shine, and Comcast NBCU is doing what it can to get even more people to sample live streaming. All viewers will get a multi-day temporary pass to access live streaming content on NBCOlympics.com."
Vulture, the pop-culture website, wrote during NBC's broadcast of the last Summer Olympics: " If you've watched even an hour or two of NBC's coverage of the London Olympics, surely a few things have stood out: the intense jingoism, the overabundance of Seacrest, the unusual arrangement of "The Star Spangled Banner" used in the medal ceremonies. (So bouncy.) But in between all those rippling muscles and thrills of victory, another consistent presence emerged: that of the endless NBC promos."
The website points out that most of the new programs NBC launched with so much hype to take advantage of the big show failed, but that doesn't stop them from trying again.
They are addicted to presenting big events as a cornerstone of their seemingly unchanging playbook.
The real game--extracting big bucks from sporting events---goes on, Olympiad after Olympiad.
There is a note of humor this year, however, added by the Progressive Magazine that speaks of the Olympics as a model for political pundits, offering a comic look at what would happen if political pundits became sports commentators:
They write: "The 2014 Sochi Olympic games are upon us, and that got our friend Ian Murphy thinking: What if America's worst political talking heads had their own sporting events?
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