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IOC to award US TV rights in June

NBC has been the absolute worst with Olympic coverage. Especially with Vancouver and the whole tape delay many "live" events played within the Pacific time zone by +3 hours when it's almost inescapable to not know the results ahead of time with the internet/facebook/twitter etc.

China was one thing but the screw job NBC gave the west coast in Vancouver was inexcusable. Not to mention NBC's coverage had been nothing but athlete puff piece after another (Rah rah team!). If the athlete wasn't American, then there was never a need to highlight anything about the competition. To contrast the lack of puff pieces for anyone that didn't bleed red, white and blue it was a travelogue with that tennis commentator discovering the local fare of the host city.

CBS and ABC did better jobs in the past and I don't see CBS dropping coin on the Olympics. ESPN/ABC have the most channels to accommodate the games but ESPN's presentation for much of everything in sports borders on the obscene useless hype to just plain cringeworthy.
 
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that two broadcast and/or cable entities/networks are going to join forces on an Olympics deal. Maybe something along the lines of the CBS/Turner NCAA deal - but wouldn't it be great to see the most famous worldwide competition be presented by two competing broadcast networks?
 
A quote from John Skipper about ESPN bidding: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/08/2156351/espn-we-would-broadcast-olympics.html

“People expect to see things live, to get results immediately,” ESPN executive John Skipper told us. “Embargoing them, holding them for later consumption, is an anachronistic model. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t use the network to do a ‘best of’ encapsulation of everything that has happened in the day, with some live and some taped coverage. I don’t quarrel with the notion that you want to put all your best content in prime time.

“There’s no reason not to have your cake and eat it, too. Show it earlier and then show it again that night. Make it a dramatic presentation that night.”
Click to expand...

That is a tempting offer. It could just come down to who is most willing to use its available capacity - between the new capacity of NBC/Comcast and the networks of ESPN - to show as many of events live as possible.

Fox would an intriguing bidder but they would have to use the channels that don't air sports (like Nat Geo) for events. Both FSC and FS+ don't have the sufficient capacity for the bigger events, as they are niche channels. I don't know if they would like to use My Network Tv. Fox would have the following to use: FX, Fox, MyNetworkTV, possibly Nat Geo (they could somehow present the Olympics in their own peculiar way), maybe Fox News (very doubtful, except for Olympics news stories), Speed (most likely just for the racing/skiiing events), FSC (if they could get into more homes, just for the association football portion of the events) and/or FSN. Maybe a combo consisting of Fox/FX/MNT/FSC/FSN can work. Fox Deportes may work if you're talking summer events. The trouble with FSN is that it could cut into their baseball coverage, which contractually would be a major problem for Fox. I could see a likelier scenario (if Fox wins the bid) of Fox/MNT/FX/FSC with FD and/or Speed.

Disney - Much easier. ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU (to showcase athletes who compete in the universities)/ESPN3/ABC/probably an ESPN PPV pack/ESPN Deportes (summer events only)

NBC/Comcast - At this point, I would like to see: USA, Versus, Golf Channel (for only that portion of the events), Telemundo (summer events only), NBC, CNBC (weekends only). Use MSNBC to air daily rundowns of Olympic events but no events, live or taped.
 
Recent Olympic coverage has been abysmal. Cutting up the coverage and broadcasting pieces on various and sundry cable channels is equally abysmal. I bought my first color TV in 1972 specifically for the Olympics. I doubt I'd even turn it on for the Games in the future.
 
Fox would do:
FOX / FX / Speed / Big Ten Network / Fox Soccer

ESPN would do:
ABC / ESPN / ESPN2 / ESPNU / ESPN Classic

Both would be equivalent to what NBC did in the last Olympiad:
NBC / CNBC / MSNBC / USA / Universal Sports

Each of these gives 1 OTA broadcast net, 2 very common cable channels, one cable net which is sometimes placed in a premium tier, and one network often placed in a premium tier. The difference is NBCU, which has Universal Sports which is a subchannel network.
 
Ideally ABC/ESPN or NBCU would be the best fit because they have the most channels to fit the programming hours. I could also see a CBS/Turner type join venture working.

Fox won't work because of 2 things: Their FSNs and the affiliates of Fox/My (cable households might be another): The FSNs aren't all owned by Fox so it'd have to be more of a syndication deal and baseball on the FSN affiliates would conflict and for OTA, Fox/MyNet doesn't take as many hours as CBS/NBC/ABC does. You'd be asking all the affiliates to surrender 2 weeks worth of syndication for the Olympics for several hours per day, whereas the Big 3 already take several hours during the daytime and prime time.
 
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