Now that the XXII Olympic Winter Games are here, it’s time to provide you a quick viewing primer on which the networks that will carry the events. You know that NBC will carry Olympic programming over a span of 18 nights beginning on Thursday, February 6 and lasting until Sunday, February 23. But what about the cable networks and online?
Overall, NBCUniversal will provide more than 1,500 hours of coverage, most of them online. Every event except for the Opening Ceremony will be streamed which is totally opposite from the days of when former NBC Sports Emperor Dick Ebersol would hold certain events for primetime.
Let’s go over what you’ll see on the networks of NBCUniversal, the rightsholder for the Olympics through 2020.
NBC
NBC will air 185 hours of tape delayed coverage. Weekdays will run from 3 p.m. — 5 p.m. ET. On most nights, primetime will air from 8 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. Late night runs from 12:05 a.m. until 1:05 a.m.
Al Michaels is back on his third consecutive Olympics to host weekend daytime coverage which will run from 3-4 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Bob Costas will host both primetime and late night for first time since the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. Lester Holt will be the host for the late afternoon coverage.
NBC’s coverage will mostly consist of figure skating, alpine skiing, snowboarding, freestyle skiing, speedskating (both short and long track), and the frozen track events of luge, skeleton and bobsled.
NBC will air the men’s hockey gold medal final on the last day of competition, Sunday, February 23 live in all time zones at 6:30 a.m. ET.
NBCSN
NBCSN will carry the bulk of the TV coverage and most of it live. NBCSN will be the home of Team USA in the team events like hockey. It will also air live figure skating which will be a first.
Starting on Saturday, February 8 through Sunday, February 23, NBCSN will present 230 hours of coverage. Al Michaels, Dan Patrick and Rebecca Lowe will host.
Coverage will begin at 3 a.m. ET/midnight PT and last until the mid-afternoon.
In addition to hockey and figure skating, NBCSN will have live coverage of speedskating, bobsled, ski jumping, Nordic combined and cross country skiing.
NBCSN will also have a Hockey Game of the Day re-air in the late afternoon.
CNBC
CNBC will be the home of Curling. The network will carry 36 hours of coverage starting Monday, February 10 and continuing through Friday, February 21 concluding with the men’s and women’s finals. CNBC’s curling programming airs daily from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. ET with the exception of Sunday, February 16 when coverage airs between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Fred Roggin will host the coverage from the NBC Sports headquarters in Connecticut. Andrew Catalon and analyst John Benton will be in Sochi along with reporter Trenni Kusnierek.
MSNBC
MSNBC carries 45 hours of live hockey and curling. MSNBC begins its coverage on Sunday, February 8 with women’s hockey featuring Canada vs. Switzerland and will end on Wednesday, February 19.
Other highlights for MSNBC include medal round hockey games as well as the men’s and women’s curling semifinals.
USA NETWORK
USA will have 43 live hours of live coverage and like MSNBC will air hockey and curling including medal rounds in both sports. USA will be the home of three Team Canada men’s hockey games.
USA starts airing Olympic coverage on Monday, February 10 with women’s curling between Team USA and Team Switzerland. USA’s schedule will last for nine consecutive days.
NBCOLYMPICS.COM
NBC Olympics will carry 1,000 hours of live streams at its website and on the NBC Sports Live Extra app for both mobiles and tablets. To see the events, both NBCOlympics.com and the Live Extra app require viewers to authenticate by using their cable or satellite ID’s and passwords. As long as your cable and satellite provider has an agreement with NBC, you’ll be able to access all 1,000 hours of coverage.
If you don’t have a password, NBC will allow you a one-time and one-time only half-hour temporary access to the streams. If you can’t authenticate after that, you can watch the streams for only five minutes each day.
The live event streams on NBCOlympics.com and Live Extra will utilize the world feed from Olympic Broadcasting Services and not the NBC announcers, however, if you’re away from a television, you can use Live Extra to watch the feeds from CNBC, MSNBC, NBCSN and USA Network.
There are two daily online programs that will be offered to viewers:
One feature that returns from London is Gold Zone, but unlike two years ago when there were no hosts and cutaways from event to event were awkward, NBC is utilizing DirecTV Red Zone Channel host Andrew Siciliano and Golf Channel host Ryan Burr to be traffic cops. They’ll be live every day and they’ll hopscotch viewers all over Sochi. Gold Zone will run daily between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. ET. Using the Whiparound format, Gold Zone will take viewers from downhill skiing and to the conclusion of curling to the faceoff of a hockey game while ending with figure skating. Fans can keep up to date on Gold Zone through its Twitter account. Overall, Gold Zone will offer more than 100 hours and will go wherever the action is happening.
Olympic Ice is a daily half-hour studio show that will stream on NBCOlympics.com and Live Extra starting at 5:30 p.m. Host Russ Thaler and 2002 Ladies Figure Skating Olympic gold medalist Sarah Hughes will review all of the figure skating competition and preview the upcoming day’s events. The show will be seen between February 7 through 21.
And the Olympic News Desk will be seen for all viewers, both authenticated and unauthenticated, on dot-com. Julie Donaldson from Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic will provide frequent updates.
All of the events will be streamed live on NBCOlympics.com and Live Extra. All except for the Opening Ceremony which is being held for primetime on Friday. Just as it did in London, NBC feels its hosts including Bob Costas, Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera will better explain the happenings instead of allowing viewers to watch it live for themselves. There’s no word at this time on whether the Closing Ceremony will be made available online
So there will be plenty of outlets to watch the Olympics. As in the past, I’ll provide the daily programming press releases from NBC which will what will be seen on which channel.
