FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, July 5th, 2012

NBC Sports Group Olympic Press Event Transcript

NBC Sports Group Olympic Press Event Transcript - June 27, 2012

[MUSIC]

GREG HUGHES

Good morning everybody, thanks for being here today exactly one month out from the London Olympics Opening Ceremony.  I’ve got a few details to go over with the group today, and then I’m going to turn things over to Michelle.  First, if you haven’t already, please silence your cell phones.  I know some of you may be using them during the presentation, but please double check them.  This presentation is being recorded, so we will have a transcript afterward if there are things that you miss.  Please identify your name and affiliation when you’re asking questions.  We have two microphones in the room, that they’ll walk around.  So once you’re called on please wait for the microphone.  If we don’t have full answers to your questions today it’s because we are one month out and there still are a few things to be settled, and we’ll get those to you in the coming week.  Just follow up with our communications staff and we’ll take care of those.  Please keep your questions today to Olympic-focused questions.  This is an Olympic forum, so stay on the subject of the NBC Universal presentation of these London Olympics.  Anything beyond that scope we’ll answer afterward in another forum or set you up elsewhere.  This group will largely be headed for London.  After today they start heading over.  There still will be access to them, and we’ll set up interviews as needed, but please try to get your questions in today.  After the presentation there will be a lunch outside in the hallway, and some of them will be available for one-on-one’s, otherwise, we’ll set you up on the phone if we can’t settle that.  For bios on all of our speakers today, we have a new website that I want to make everyone aware of: NBCSportsGroupPressBox.com.

That will be our media guide for the London Olympics, and post-Olympics it will morph into our NBC Sports Group press site.  And now, here to take you through each panel is the newest member of our team, she’s working across NBC Universal platforms at Access Hollywood, and also within the NBC Sports Group, and she will be our morning host on the NBC Sports Network during the London Olympics: Michelle Beadle.  [APPLAUSE]

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Hi, good morning.  I am Michelle Beadle, I am the newbie.  Well, there are a couple of us, actually.  So this will be my first Olympic Games, even just as a fan, professionally, all that good stuff.  I’m very excited.  I just got back from track and field, Peter Diamond down there, which was my first foray into the whole thing, and so that really to me excited, which I’m hoping is kind of what’s going on across the board, swimming and, and diving and all of that.  Um, where you are right now, obviously, is the Saturday Night Live studios, it’s 8H.  What you’re seeing is, this is basically going to be a little London away from London.  The booths that are behind you are where they’ll be calling games.  So, a lot of computers set up, a lot of booths, I think there are eleven of them total.  And this place will be a madhouse during the course of the Olympics Games.  Um, before we get to these guys, Mark Lazarus and Bob Costas, I have a little video we’d like start things off with, and then we’ll start with them.

[VIDEO PLAYS]

ANNOUNCER (video)

This summer the world will gather in London.  On July 27th America will embrace returning stars.

MAN (video)

I watched Michael Jordan do what nobody else ever did on the basketball court.  You know, I wanted to do that in the swimming pool.

MAN (video)

We’re good friends, but at the same time, when we get on that blocks, it’s ever man for themselves.

WOMAN (video)

We want this so badly, and you know, I want to do what’s never been done before.

MAN (video)

Meet fresh faces, and come together to cheer for an American team seeking its fifth straight finish atop the medal chart.  Don’t miss the captivating stories, the breathtaking setting.  The 2012 Olympic Games are coming to the networks and platforms of NBC Universal.

[END VIDEO]

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Are you pumped?  Some smiles, some not.  I get it.  The chairman of NBC Sports Group, Mark Lazarus, and of course next to him, I believe everyone’s quite familiar with this young man’s work, Bob Costas.  You guys are going to talk about some Olympics here, but I want to ask you, Mark, we’re just a month away, as was mentioned, what’s the latest?

MARK LAZARUS

Well, first of all, thank you all for being here, we look forward to working with you and giving you what you need to help us inform America what our plans are and what we’re doing.  Let’s start, I think, with the fact that I’m so darn excited I can’t sleep at night.  I, I wake up in the middle of the night, I wake up early, I am starting to get into a hundred percent, or nearly a hundred percent focus on the Olympic Games with some of the other things we have going on around the division, but I think there’s a noticeable excitement in all aspects.  You know?  Start with my sleep patterns, but go to you know, you look at what’s happening with the Olympic Trials, which are underway here with track and field, and swimming and diving, and we’ve had very strong ratings success, up over what’s been going on in the past, and there’s a real excitement about what this US team can do and will do.  You look at the sponsor activation and it’s been tremendous.  You can’t turn on a television set or look, flip through a, a print ad that doesn’t have multiple, Olympic sponsors and Olympics rings, all helping build up the excitement about that.  And, and just fans and viewership.  I mean, you’re starting to see a lot of people talk about it, and that noticeable excitement is really interesting for us, and really gratifying for us, because we’ve been working on this, and many people have been working on this for, for years and decades to keep that going.  These games will be the most comprehensively covered games in the history of sports television, of any event.  Over fifty-five hundred hours, we’ve already come out that.  If you were to stretch that out on a line across one twenty-four hour television network, it’s seven point six months of content.  It’s a heck of a lot of content to take place over seventeen days.  We are excited for that opportunity, we are up to the challenge, but we’re doing things that have never been done before, and we believe we are going to build the optimum mix for fans and viewers on how to view the games.  Every single piece of the games will be available live on one platform or another.  We’ve said that a hundred times, I know there’s going to be questions about how that’s going to work, and skepticism about that, but we believe that every fan will have the opportunity to see the event in the format, on the platform, and in the time frame that serves them best.  The leadership of the Games, many of which will speak here tonight, have had experience in over a hundred Olympic Games.  This is a very experienced group of experts who know how to bring the games to the American people, in the way the American people, the masses of American people want to watch the games.  We’re going to be able to use all of our platforms.  You know, as we, as a sports group, work together, as NBC Universal works together, we will be able to provide more and better coverage than ever before.  There will be more broadcast hours available, not only broadcast hours on NBC network, but on Telemundo, a second broadcast channel for Spanish language.  The cable part of the business will also have a significant influence in who the games are viewed, with live coverage across NBC Sports Network, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC.  There’s a tremendous amount of coverage there, and of course our digital offerings, which will be new, unique, and the most technologically advanced digital offering of any sports event.  We believe this will be the biggest digital event of all time.  And Rick will talk more about that later.  You know, in Beijing the stars aligned for us in a very, very nice way, with time periods, with stars being built, and rivalries.  That’s happening again.  We have a very large sense of optimism that we’re going to have a very strong team, that team will be embraced by the American people, delivering live programming on line and on television during the day will all serve to drive people to the rich legacy and storytelling of the NBC broadcast prime time schedule, which of course will be hosted by Bob.  The talent that has been assembled by the team, by Molly and Jim and Gary and the team, some of which work with us regularly, Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Dan Patrick some of which are experts in their field, but we believe, you know, the core group of NBC talent that work with us, across other programs as well, but then on these games, serves as the Mount Rushmore of broadcasting talent, and the lead face on that Mount Rushmore is Bob Costas.  Bob?

BOB COSTAS

Mark, thanks.  This will be the tenth Olympics that I’ve been part of, and the ninth, I think, as the, the prime time host.  And even as the technology changes, and the means of distribution and consumption changes, at the heart of it is to tell stories well.  And I long ago recognized fully, not just kind of the concept, but began to experience it, this is not the same.  Although it is a major sports event, the number one global sports event, it’s not exactly the same as covering, [CLEARS THROAT], an athletic competition, even, even a major athletic competition.  It’s a prime time miniseries spread out over nearly three weeks.  We will present everything that a person who deeply cares about track and field, or deeply cares about fencing, if they want to seek it out, and knows everything about it, we’ll present everything they need to know.  But we will also continue to present things in a way that brings in the person who might never watch even a swimming competition, or even a one hundred meter competition between the very same athletes who will be in London the last week of the Olympic Games, show the same event, same competitors, same stadium ten days later.  You get a tiny fraction of the audience.  We recognize that.  And you have to not only clue those viewers in as to who these competitors are as athletes, and what’s at stake, and what the likely dynamics of the competition are, you also have to give them some kind of backstory about at least some of these competitors to give them a reason to be invested in it.  So, you know, I understand that that is the approach.  I also hope that viewers understand how much of the credit goes to producers, and researchers, and people behind the scenes.  People ask me all the time, have you begun studying all of these athletes?  There is no way in the world that anybody, anybody, Ken Jennings or the computer who beat him on Jeopardy, nobody can know these ten thousand plus athletes and these two hundred plus nations up, up and down.  I do not know who the top platform diver from Peru is.  If, in fact, it becomes necessary to know, the researchers will let me know.  Um, but the people behind the scenes just don’t get enough credit.  Very often you’ll hear, I saw this terrific piece that Bob did, or Al Michaels did, or this time around that Michelle did.  And maybe we contributed to it, maybe we helped in the writing of it, maybe we added some input, maybe we did the interview that provided some of the components of it, but the producers never get enough credit.  And if you disagree with something, neither do they get enough blame.  So that’s that.  [LAUGHTER]

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Do you guys, any questions for these two gentleman?  NBC Pages have some mics, so just raise your hand and announce yourself.  Hello, Ed.

BOB COSTAS

Ed?

ED

Mark, just talk a little bit more about the decision to go with the live, everything live, and, and how is it going to work?  Will they, will there be, if people are watching on the internet, who, will there be announcers, or will they just be seeing a, a live feed, so to speak?

MARK LAZARUS

The decision was made because we think that as times have changed that there is a, a sense to satisfy all people and with, using technology.  And the ability to provide live streams of every event is one that we now have, and we believe will work.  In the past maybe the technology wasn’t there to support that.  We also believe firmly to package and put together the best stories with the most high profile events should be saved, from a television point of view, for when the most people are available to watch it, which is in prime time.  We think that the streaming during the day will help drive people to prime time.  The way it will be presented will not be the same, it won’t be packaged the same on line and live during the day, it will be mostly utilizing world feed, with some less, lesser announcing, in terms of the people that we’re using, and how it would work.  But there, in some cases there will be, in some cases there will not be.

BOB COSTAS

You know, I understand, for whatever my two cents are worth, I understand now, and we’ve responded to it as the world has changed, but even in the past as the world was in the process of changing, people’s demand for information immediately.  I also understand that it’s a lot easier if you’re writing for newspaper X to say with righteous indignation, this is some sort of outrage.  And yet, if you swapped, if that person swapped jobs that day, with Dick Ebersol or now Mark Lazarus, they would either do exactly the same thing, or they would be fired and then taken to a sanitarium.  [LAUGHTER]

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Very strong feeling about that one, Bob.  [LAUGHS]

MARK LAZARUS

I don’t like either of those choices, so… [LAUGHTER]

BOB COSTAS

I mean it, but it’s the newspaper, the newspaper has not invested billions of dollars in rights fees and production fees.  And it’s, it’s a simple, straightforward business decision that now has been modified, I think, in an enlightened way tto allow for the changes in the way people consume information.

MARK LAZARUS

Those who want it, we solve for the immediacy, and we maintain the preciousness of the packaging and storytelling for when the biggest, largest audience is available for ourselves, for our marketers, for the Olympic sports and the Olympic Games.

BOB COSTAS

And, and something which I think is important from, from my standpoint, and if it overlaps to, to Al or Dan Patrick from their standpoint, the audience will know when these events are on tape.  But they will be presented in such a way, that if you didn’t want to know, you can enjoy it that way.  But it’s very important, and in thousands of utterances, once or twice, accidentally, has the wrong tense been used.  I hope not, but it could happen.  But we try to be very, very vigilant about that.  We do not say Michael Phelps now goes to the line in pursuit of gold medal number fifteen.  We say, he went to the pool in pursuit of gold medal number fifteen.  It’s always presented, it, there is no attempt to deceive.  There is an attempt, an enlightened one, I think, to maintain a certain atmosphere in which if the person watching chooses to experience as if he or she knows nothing about it, they can.  But there I no attempt to deceive them into believing that this is happening live if it is not.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Question?

ED HULA

Yeah, Ed Hula with Around the Rings.  Um, Mark, your first Olympics, um, in charge, what, what kind of mark do you hope to leave on the games, what do you hope your legacy is from London on NBC’s Olympics coverage?

MARK LAZARUS

Well, I don’t think you can create a legacy with one, one Games.  So my, my strong preference is to be invited back to do the next one.  [LAUGHTER]  Uh, and, and leave a legacy over time.  [LAUGHS]  Um—

BOB COSTAS

Well, it’s only a year and a half, they can’t can you in that space in time.  You’re going to Sochi, if only as punishment… [LAUGHTER]  Unless you use the wrong tenses.

MARK LAZARUS

Unless you use the wrong tenses.  Listen, my job is to help steward this enormous, talented team to help make judgement and decisions on where we’re going to air product, how we’re going to air product, the decision that we made to stream everything live, the decision on how to market and promote the next sets of things that are important to NBC Universal and NBC Sports Group.  Ultimately we will be measured by what will be the success of the games.  I don’t have an individual goal on the mark I want to leave on the games.  I think that we want to come out of this with a sense that the viewing population of America says, that was a fun two weeks, I can’t wait to do it again.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

In the back?  Right here.

 

RICHARD DEITSCH

Richard Deitsch, Sports Illustrated. 

MARK LAZARUS

Yeah…  It was working.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Oh, it’s working Richard, don’t try to get rid of the mic.

BOB COSTAS

Just speak loudly.

RICHARD DEITSCH

Uh, yeah, I don’t ask the questions… [INAUDIBLE]  …average to sixteen… [INAUDIBLE] …ratings, twenty-seven point… [INAUDIBLE] …how important for you is it to match those numbers… [INAUDIBLE]

MARK LAZARUS

I would love to match those numbers.  I think that’s an unlikely scenario.  Again, with the way those games lined up with time, with the live, and the off hours, that worked very well, some of the great, historic performances and star athletes.  We’re not going to measure ourselves on whether we achieve those ratings or not, we’re going to measure ourselves based on whether, you know, several hundred million people experience the games across our platforms, and we feel very good that we can achieve that goal.

BOB COSTAS

We had a good plan, I think, in Beijing, and I think we executed it pretty well, but everything is subject to chance.  The NBA Just came off very good ratings for a five game series, but had it gone seven, they would have been better ratings.  By one hundredth of a second or less, in the second of eight gold medal races, if Michael Phelps takes silver there, his teammates take silver in, in a relay race, then the whole storyline changes.  And that undoubtedly diminishes the rating, by a hundredth of a second that whole pursuit was kept alive.  And then he kept it alive a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time.  And as Mark said, the extreme time difference worked to our advantage, because they were willing to stage those races in the late morning in Beijing, which made them live in prime time back in the States.  So that all played out, it was a perfect scenario.

MARK LAZARUS

And we haven’t promised advertisers that number.  We think, you know, media gravity brings things down, whether, you know, in all forms of media.  So, we believe that we can achieve ratings higher than anything else on television, maybe for the year, but it won’t, we’re not measuring ourselves against Beijing.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Back row?

JOEL SCHECTMAN

Joel Schectman from The Wall Street Journal.  Hey, Mark, you said earlier that you want every fan to be able to enjoy the Games in the format and time, and manner that, you know, that he or she wants to, what, you know, what are those various formats, and, and how is that different from, you know, from past Olympics?

MARK LAZARUS

Well, the formats are broadcast television, English language, Spanish language, cable television across four, across multiple networks, on line via desktop PC, also applications via tablet and mobile.  So, all of those will play a factor in these games.  And people will be able to consume the games either in long-form video, short-form video, data, news and information, via one of those platforms at all times.  In some cases, you know, when you’re using a tablet or a PC, you will be asked to verify and sign in that you are a customer of one of the television pay TV services, of a subscription package.  In some cases it will be free and available as it is in free over the air television.  Richard?

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

He’s got the mic, OK.  Oh no, oh, you’re right here, go ahead.

 

LIANA BAKER

Hi, Liana Baker from Reuters.  Um, during the Olympics broadcasts, how much promotion could we expect for non-NBC sports programming?  I mean, for NBC non-sports programming?

MARK LAZARUS

You will, you will see it, we think it’s an, a good platform for NBC Universal to talk about other parts of our company.  So, we are still working on the exact promotion plan, but you will definitely see, other shows on the NBC Broadcast network promoted, other services, whether they’re cable services, or theme parks, or other things promoted during the Games.  We think that’s part of what we, as a company, gain value with these big audiences, and with our ability to utilize it as a promotional platform.

RICHARD SANDOMIR

Richard Sandomir, New York Times.  Bob, can you reflect on 1992, when it was just broadcast coverage and—

BOB COSTAS

Well, we had the triple-cast.

RICHARD SANDOMIR

I was going to say that, I was just going to say that.  And the attempt to broaden the coverage was on the triple-cast.  It’s grown so much since then, can you reflect on, on that growth, and maybe even how silly the triple-cast was. [LAUGHTER]

BOB COSTAS

Well, you know, I am not the greatest expert on either the technology or the business decisions that go into it.  I understand it in a broad sense, but I’m far from the best person to comment on it.  But I will say this, that the essence of good storytelling, and the essence of good broadcasting remains the same.  You know, there, there are a lot of things that technology has brought us, and these additional, you know, tubes of communication have brought us that are wondrous, and a lot of it is just crap.  You know, the more you broaden anything out, it’s like American Idol auditions, you let everybody audition, and you’re going to find some diamonds in the rough.  You’re also going to find people who would be lousy singing in the shower.  You know, the, the essence of what’s good hasn’t changed.  The essence of how you call a ball game well, you know, there may be different camera angles, there may be different graphics, there may be ways that you can interact with social media if you’re watching it, but the way Al Michaels calls a football game is not that much different, nor should it be, because it’s perfect, than it would have been in 1970.  You know, so some of the features may be shorter because of attention span, some of where we funnel the viewership may be different, but the way in which I anchor the games, based on what they ask me to do, is not much different.

MARK LAZARUS

Richard, you know, the prime, the entire NBC Sports Group, and NBC Universal for that matter, the way this ecosystem sets up, you know, we believe that that’s a reason that sports on our networks right now are defying what I called media gravity a little bit before, that there is an opportunity, you know, and look at the trials, where we’re running them live in prime time on NBC, and we’re re-running them on NBC Sports Network.  We’re also doing lead-up, other, the heats and other things on NBC Sports Network that have never been shown before.  And that is building interest, building, uh, understanding of who the characters are, building up the rivalries, building interest in the US team as it develops.  We’ve had experience with that in golf, we had experience of that in horse racing, where we’re utilizing the platforms to build towards this great crescendo which we’ll call prime time on NBC.

BOB COSTAS

My point, I think it was pretty clear, is this: that that our objective, at least from a broadcaster standpoint, hasn’t changed that much.  It’s to do a good broadcast, it’s to present things well.  Now, what these additional platforms have done, is that they’ve given us opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.  This isn’t an Olympic example, but I think it’s a good example, I wouldn’t expect NBC as a network to do a show like the one they do each month with me on the NBC Sports Network.  HBO did that, they were well suited to do it.  Now we come close to replicating that idea here on, on the eighth floor, that well suits the NBC Sports Network. But my objective in doing that is just the same as it would have been twenty years ago, to do a good show with good content.

 

WOMAN

[INAUDIBLE] …Mark, do you expect there to be a noticeable impact on ratings in NBC Sports Network after the Olympics, because of the Olympics?

MARK LAZARUS

I think that’s going to be dependent on us having good ideas and good programming coming out.  I think we will get a large amount of sampling during the Games, and we have some new programming that we will have coming out the Games and into the fall that we’ll talk about at a later date, but we think it gives us a great opportunity to help grow that business.  You know, we have a long-term agenda with the NBC Sports Network, we’re, but we think this is a, a, it will be another seminal moment, from the re-branding, to the strength of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, to all that we did in horse racing, to the Tour de France, which is starting now, the Olympics we think is another step in that growth pattern.

BOB COSTAS

Howard?

HOWARD

[INAUDIBLE]  …Bob, do you, you talked earlier about the impossibility of knowing… [INAUDIBLE] …how do you go about deciding who to focus on, and what… [INAUDIBLE]

BOB COSTAS

Well, I have a general idea of which sports are most likely to get the bulk of the attention in prime time.  So your, your focus is there.  And then your focus is on the handful of athletes likely to star and contend for medals within those sports.  There’s also the broader idea of being as familiar as possible with the host city, the host nation.  Um, I’ve built up a general understanding of the history of the Olympics, and some of the touchstones, and great athletes that are likely to be compared.  I didn’t have to be told about Mark Spitz when Michael Phelps was making his way toward those marks.  So, I think it’s helpful to have that kind of institutional memory for lack of a, of a better term.  So I’ve got, I’ve got that built up, but I also rest easy in the knowledge that if something comes out of nowhere, like, I barely knew who Rulon Gardner was in 2000, in Sydney.  Now, granted, those were a taped games, it was almost like we were on the History Channel.  It wasn’t just delayed, it was the next day. I was presenting events that, in some cases, I had attended, and that I then read about in the Sydney newspapers while being driven to the broadcast center.  All right, so that was different.  But, even, even had it been done live, and many of those things were essentially done live to tape anyway, the components were put together live, even had it been done live, within five minutes Joe Gesue and Aaron Cohen, and the other people there on the set would have briefed me about Rulon Gardner.  And in my very small list of strengths, one of them is that I can take a briefing pretty quickly.  And I can take that information and put it into some kind of broader context. I got the idea of what a gigantic upset this was, I knew who Aleksandr Karelin was, blah, blah, blah, and you make a story out of it.

MAN

[INAUDIBLE]  …research for athletic… [INAUDIBLE]

BOB COSTAS

You’re looking, you’re looking for personal stories.  You’re also looking for quirkiness too.  You know, I think any good broadcast, not just an Olympic broadcast, a good broadcast of a baseball game should have texture to it.  It should have information, should have some history, should have something that’s offbeat, quirky, humorous, and where called for it should have journalism and judiciously it should also have commentary  That’s my idea.  You know, that’s my ideal.  Sometimes we exactly hit that, sometimes we don’t.

MARK LAZARUS

We will continue to try to personalize and dimensionalize the characters in this story as it evolves over several weeks and that starts with the trials, and it’s what NBC has done a wonderful job of over the last several decades, and that is still a hallmark of our coverage.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

All right, Mark, Bob, you guys, you guys are done with your part now.

BOB COSTAS

We’re done?

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Yeah.

BOB COSTAS

Can we sit here now?

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

You can sit right there.

BOB COSTAS

Thank you, Michelle.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Which is great.

MARK LAZARUS

Thank you, Michelle.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

As we get set up for our next panel.  Oh, go ahead, I didn’t know if you guys wanted to clap or not.  [LAUGHTER]

BOB COSTAS

Spontaneous outpouring of devotion.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

I know… [LAUGHS]

BOB COSTAS

All the employees clapped, none of the press.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

They’re smart.  Please look up at the screen, we’ve got some more video for you.

[VIDEO PLAYS]

ANNOUNCER (video)

Beginning July 27th, the London Olympic Games, the biggest event of the year, now with even more ways to watch.  With coverage on nine platforms, starting with two hundred and seventy hours on NBC, home of the biggest prime time Olympic event, and Telemundo, providing more Spanish coverage of the Olympics than ever before.  NBC Sports Network, home of US Olympic Teams with coverage up to sixteen hours a day.  MSNBC will have coverage of eighteen medal events.   CNBC, the home of Olympic boxing.   Bravo, bringing live Olympic tennis.  Plus, two Olympic specialty channels, dedicated to basketball and soccer.  And for the first time ever, a 3D channel, presented by Panasonic.  Plus, live stream of every event, including ever medal, on NBCOlympics.com.  This summer, there’s more ways to view, more coverage than ever.  The 2012 London Olympics, beginning July 27th, only on the networks and platforms of NBC Universal.

[END VIDEO]

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

All right, so our next panel of four fine folks who are going to make everybody in this room a little bit smarter, I present to you, Gary Zenkel…  By the way, they, they were adamant that I mentioned what a good golfer Gary is.  So I’m going to do that.

GARY ZENKEL

Used to be.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Because I’m smart.  Yes, I’m sure you still are.  The Executive Producer of the Olympics, Jim Bell, also—

JIM BELL

I’ll play golf in ten years.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

There you go.  And if you’re on Twitter, the owner of the best avatar out there.  Molly Solomon produces the prime time show, and is responsible for finding one hundred and thirteen members of the talent squad—

 

MOLLY SOLOMON

Don’t ask me to list them all, Michelle.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

I will not.  And then the secret weapon, the guru of all things scheduling, and a super suit, as I found out today, Peter Diamond.  We’re going to start off—

PETER DIAMOND

I don’t play golf, I go to track meets.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Yeah.  [LAUGHS]  He knows what he’s talking about when he’s there too.  Gary, we’re going to start with you, and just an event of this magnitude, if you could talk a little bit about the logistics, and how you pull this thing off.

GARY ZENKEL

Well, it is a monstrous event.  We basically have, it’s a mini-invasion into whatever the host city and the host country, because we pull it off because we have an incredible group of really experienced experts, engineers, operators, they’ve been doing this almost to a person since the early nineties, back in many cases to 1988.  And as we go from city to city, there is a tremendous amount of change culturally, the rules are all different, the technology is sometimes different.  Our guys are just incredible in the way they pull it off.  [CLEARS THROAT]  But the other change which I should mention, since we’re all crammed into a very small space in what is a very big studio, is that as we have gotten bigger, and as we have gone from a hundred and seventy hours on one channel in 1996 to five thousand, five hundred and thirty-five hours in thirty days, nine networks, and all that stuff that Mark and Bob talked about digitally, is we still have to do this essentially with the same number of people.  And so we moved a fair amount of that operation back to New York, and Michelle, you are sitting right now in what we call the highlights factory.  And this is where we break down thirty-two sports, during the course of, you know, the sixteen or seventeen or eighteen hour competition day, and we make highlights of absolutely every competition, every medal, we somewhere in this building do what’s called trans-coding, which I can’t explain to you what exactly that means, but that means putting it in a format so that we can send it to the set-top box, where we’ll send a thousand different video assets, or so we can send it to our mobile distributors, or so we can send it into the internet to be served on our mobile apps.  So it’s a, it’s an amazing undertaking, it’s a privilege, as a former decent golfer, with otherwise no other skills other than the mediocre lawyer back in the day, to be associated with the best people in the broadcasting business, who pull off a task that is, that is mind-boggling, and they’re going to hit a new hurdle, and set a new bar in London.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Setting the bar, Jim, what, what can the people at home watching expect from a, a Jim Bell production?

JIM BELL

[LAUGHS]  Well I, I would probably reject that label, I think, because you’ve heard already, this is a, a big team, a big family, a big group that’s been through multiple Olympics.  And so to that end it’ll be a continuation of the legacy and tradition that’s had so much success.  But, by the same token, is willing to advance the ball, take some chances, use technology, and I think the headline for us is: live.  In London you’re going to see a lot of live.  You’re going to be live streaming, live on the network live on the cable channels, lots and lots of live.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Molly, I think I speak for everyone in this room who’s dying to know where one finds a water canoeing analyst for the Olympics.

 

MOLLY SOLOMON

I kind of relish this every four years.  Inevitably, you know, a couple of people retire, some take new jobs, and one example is white water canoeing, which gets absolutely no TV exposure, except for during the Olympics, unfortunately.  Um, so we go about kind of this, this, it’s putting a puzzle together, and whitewater canoeing, it involves a lot of phone calls.  Um, we get it down to about six people, we do auditions, and who I ended up selecting was a guy named Eric Giddens, he’s a 1996 Olympian.  And what intrigued me most is that he has a Ph.D. in oceanography, and he owns a brew pub in Kernville, California.  So I think that kind of epitomizes the kind of people we’re looking for, they’re smart, they’re savvy, they know their sport, and they’re well-rounded, and they, they also know how to make a good beer.  So… [LAUGHTER]

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

I think everyone likes beer.  Peter, you started in 1976 in the Olympics, so under seventy-seven hours of coverage, now here we are over fifty-five hundred, this, is this your dream as a programmer?

PETER DIAMOND

It really is.  I spend a lot of time confused, but it is my dream.  I mean, when I started in 1976, I was ABC’s researcher, I was on the set, not far from the great Jim McKay.  Leroy Neiman was also on the set doing a painting.  And it was just, it was just an incredible experience back then, and it’s, it really is, as you suggest, Michelle, very, very hard to imagine that it has reached the point it has now with the two thousand hours, over two thousand hours of coverage of television, on television, plus everything we’re doing in the digital world.  On the NBC Network, what’s really, what’s really happening is almost a, a takeover of the network during the Olympics.  We start with the Today show.  On weekdays we go straight into our weekday daytime show, which at seven hours is, double the length of anything we’ve ever done before on a weekday day time with the Olympics.  There is a break for local news, for network news, then back for prime time.  Then to late local news.  Then to our late night show.  And then to the overnight replay.  So, we really are, with a couple of exceptions, the NBC Television Network for the seventeen days of the games.  In addition, we have all our cable coverage, which has been spoken about by Mark.  The NBC Sports Network, incredibly important, and as a reflection of that, that’s going to start every day, uh, in London, when competition begins.  Nine a.m. London, Four a.m. in New York, it will be on throughout the entire competition day.  Plus a little more.  It’s not going to go off until prime time in the States begins.  What that means is that we’re going to have over two hundred and fifty hours on the NBC Sports Network, and that’s the most hours ever on any, most original hours ever on any single Olympic network.  As Mark mentioned, we also have MSNBC on much of the day, CNBC, the network of boxing this time, as it has been in the past.  Bravo, the network of tennis, from the All England Club.  Telemundo, which will, first and foremost, I think, feature football, that’s the biggest sport for that audience.  Everyone at Telemundo is very pleased that the Mexican team has qualified.  And they’ll also have a lot of other major sports this time on their way to a record of, a Telemundo record of nearly a hundred seventy-five hours of Olympic coverage.  So we’re very excited about the very comprehensive television coverage we’ll be presenting this time.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Questions for any of these people?  Microphone…  It’s coming around.  [LAUGHS]

BOB FERNANDEZ

Hi, Bob Fernandez with the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Um, how many hours are going to be streamed free on NBC, uh, Olympics, and how is that going to work.  Do you know at this point?

PANELIST

We’re streaming thirty-five hundred hours of live coverage.  That is every frame of every competition minute that’s taking place in London, which means if there are four simultaneous tennis matches at the All England Club, they will be available.  We will get to a peak concurrent stream, potentially, of forty at a time.  We say free, yes, you have to be a subscriber of cable, satellite, TelCo provider, roughly ninety percent of the country.  But if you are, yes, it’s streamed free.  You don’t have to be if you want to access our highlights, you want to access some of the rewinds of shows that have aired previously, or the rewinds of those live shows forty-eight hours after the event has taken place.

BOB FERNANDEZ

I’m sorry, some of it’s going to be free, though, right?  I mean, some, on the stream, will be free?  Is, is that correct?

PANELIST

Yes, when you say free, you mean not subject to any kind of verification—

BOB FERNANDEZ

You don’t have to be…

PANELIST

Right.

BOB FERNANDEZ

And how are you going to get, get to use that?

PANELIST

You’re going to access the site, and certain content will be available, but again, the vast majority of our life content is subject to verification of a subscription.

BOB FERNANDEZ

OK.

DAVE BAUDER

Dave Bauder with the Associated Press.  Gary, with the expectation that the Games are going to lose money for NBC, is there any way that NBC is looking to save money during, uh, its coverage?  For instance, using these at home studios more, or, or not?

GARY ZENKEL

No, we had the same at-home operation in Beijing.  We actually agreed with the IOC when we entered into, not this last year’s deal, but the one we did in 2003, to make an effort to reduce the number of credentialed travelers, and so this was really an effort to shrink the size of our footprint in the host city, and it’s obviously more, can be more efficient.  We are obviously very prudent about the way we approach our coverage, and how we spend money.  But there isn’t a broadcaster that puts more resources against our coverage of the Olympics across these many platforms than NBC by a long shot.  So, we’re prudent, but we will deliver the same presentation that this audience has always come to expect.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Mark, you want to add to that?

MARK LAZARUS

Yeah, I just want to add to that, that you know, while you suggest, we don’t know the results yet, financial results, but yes, we don’t necessarily expect that this will be profitable.  But we do know that we will have an improved financial position over the plan that was inherited at the time of the merger over a year ago.  And so we are very optimistic.  We are not pulling in resources, we are, as Gary suggests, and really under his stewardship, prudent on how we spend money, but we are not altering our plans.  In fact, I think we probably have the luxury of having been able to invest more.  And the costs of doing business in London are higher than anyone thought they would be, and projected.  It’s just an expensive place to do business.  But we are very confident that we are going to exceed the goals that laid out when we inherited, at the time of the merger, what the plan was.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Ed, and then we’ll…

ED

What’s your, what’s the network’s sense of how much, how, how many people will access this live content on, uh, you know, on, via the, your site?  I mean, the, do you have a sense of what kind of traffic it’s going to produce?  Obviously the swimming and the track, but what’s, what’s your expectations here?

PANELIST

Look, it’s, it’s really, really difficult to predict those types of numbers.  We did fifty-two million unique users in Beijing.  We expect that, as it has from Games to Games, to grow, to grow significantly.  We now stream the entire Olympics.  We think that will, of course, attract more attention.  And the process of verification is much better, and we’re spending a lot of time and a lot of marketing effort in partnership with the multi-channel distribution industry to communicate how you access that content.  With the success of that program, we think the, you know the potential traffic is, is staggeringly high.

MAN

This is for Jim Bell.  Jim, you have a day job, and now you’ve taken on Executive Producer of the Olympics.  How do you define that job?  What does that job entail?  What exactly will you do?  The previous occupant of that job never fully explained the magic that went on behind those doors?

JIM BELL

I’m sorry, which, which job?

MAN

The Executive Producer of the Olympics—

JIM BELL

The Olympics?

 

MAN

The organization—

JIM BELL

What, but what’s the question?  I’m sorry.

MAN

What is your job?  How do you define your job?

JIM BELL

Oh, I see.

MAN

What, what will you be doing for all that time in the control room?

JIM BELL

Oh, I think the, the first order of business is, is arranging the prime time broadcast, and then from there the other shows flow, the day time show, the programming decisions, they get made.  You know, the Olympics, you don’t sort of show up and think fifty-five hundred hours are going to suddenly happen.  So there’s been a lot of people working at this for years, and getting it into place and getting the schedules aligned.  But as we know, things will change, storylines will develop, and I think one of the most important roles will be, once that opening ceremony happens, once that torch is lit, reacting to what’s happening, and making changes if needed.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Who’s got a mic?  Second row?

ED HULA

Ed Hula with Around the Rings.  Gary, can you say what the size of the team will be in London, and then also here for NBC?  And then you mentioned the costs, I mean, can you go into a little bit more about the challenges that London’s the cost of doing business in London, what challenges has that provided?

GARY ZENKEL

Sure.  First question, size of the team, we’re, we will have roughly twenty-eight hundred credentialed NBC workers in London.  And that covers not only the, the production of the actual Olympic coverage, that is the Today show, that is Nightly News, that are all of the NBC affiliates and the NBC News Channel, Telemundo, et cetera.  It’s a big, it’s a big team.  There will be roughly seven hundred people that will come to work in this building every day also generating content, whether it’s through the highlights and digital content that will be done here and elsewhere, or some of the sports will actually be, be called out of these announce booths that you’re sitting next to.  Again, it’s thirty-plus sports.  We will do some of those off to here in this building.  The second question was how do we, oh, London and its cost challenges.  Well, London, as everybody knows, [CLEARS THROAT], and we have experienced over the course of the last five years, and in preparation, is an incredibly expensive city.  When you, you can line up things like the cost of tickets, the cost of hotel rooms, and it’s vastly higher than that that we’ve experienced in prior games.  The flip side is, it’s a remarkable city, it will give to Jim and Bob and Joe and this team so many other stories to add texture and context that we’ll take the tradeoff.  But financially, London, like, you know, like many of these major cities, is a challenge.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Back row?

NEIL BEST

Neil Best from Newsday, this is sort of related to what you were just talking about, about London.  Aside from the cost factor, you mentioned the cultural challenges in other, you know, other places the Games have been, does being in London, where the language and the culture are so similar to ours, is, does that make certain things easier?

PANELIST

It does, it does.  Not to say that it’s that much harder.  Yes, there are rules, there are cultural differences in some of the other territories and some of the other host cities that we’ve been to, but there are always a tremendous amount of expertise that is brought in.  And the IOC, of course, oversees the build out of these cities.  So, yes, London is, it’s easier.  They speak our language—

PANELIST

I, it’s a magical place, I mean I can’t think of a better setting for an Olympics, it’s one of the greatest cities in the world, it’s a place that speaks the language that Americans are familiar with and have a connection to.  It’s great.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Last question for these guys, back row.

JOEL SCHECTMAN

Joel Schectman from The Wall Street Journal.  You said that in the Beijing Games there were fifty million people who accessed the Games on line, and you expect the number to be significantly higher this time.  I just was kind of curious, what kind of technology investment did you have to make, and you know, what kind of new technology did you have to bring in, in order to, you know, facilitate that many people, you know, I guess clogging up that much bandwidth.  [LAUGHTER]

PANELIST

I’m not sure I’m the, the best person to answer the technical nature of what you’re asking.  But I will say that, and I brought this as a prop that I expected to use sooner.  This is a big deal, the tablet, the smart phone, I’m not exactly sure what the current projection is for thirty days from now.  I think we’re stretching into the hundred million on the smart phone, and I don’t know, fifty maybe here.  Um, this provides access to people that never existed before.  This really is the big, vast change, or one of them certainly, that London represents versus the prior Olympics.  And this accessibility, and the quality of the experience of watching this has to yield just more consumption of that vide.  And so technically, great partnerships, YouTube, Adobe, some of the CDN Companies like Akamai and others, to ensure that this video is delivered.  Obviously a great relationship with our parent company Comcast and the expertise that they are affording us, because of the high tech nature of their business.  So we’re confident, one, more consumption, because more access, and two, the advancement in technology that takes place every day, certainly over the last four years, is going to enable that much more consumption.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

All right, guys.

 

MOLLY SOLOMON

Michelle, can I give them—

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Oh, Molly, yeah?

 

MOLLY SOLOMON

Can I give you guys one talent update I forgot to tell you about.  A couple weeks ago we announced our prime time contributor list who will be joining Bob, um, in the evenings, and that was, Mary Carillo, Ryan Seacrest, John McEnroe, and Bela Karolyi.  And we wanted to tell you all that Sean White, the most colorful athlete in the Winter Games, actually is going to come over for a week during the middle of the Games to give us his take on the summer games.  So Sean White will be joining us as well.  And Jimmy Fallon, who came by in Vancouver the last Friday, is coming over for the second week.  So that promises a lot of surprises.  It’ll probably involve music.  Anything else, Bob, you think?

BOB COSTAS

I haven’t thought about it, but I’m sure it’ll be great.  [LAUGHTER]

 

MOLLY SOLOMON

So that’s it.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

I like your honesty, Bob, I really do.  Be careful, please, this can be very awkward for everyone.  We don’t have video now, but if you’d like to stretch for a second as we get the sales, marketing, and research guys up here next, talk a little money, a little data, this is the fun stuff.   So, if you’re not familiar with who these gentleman are, obviously you need to, we need to sell some time, Seth Winter, the guy right here to my left, the man who’s responsible for basically helping, and getting America to watch, CMO John Miller.  And then all things research boil down to Alan Wurtzel.  Seth, you want to talk a little money right now, how are sales going?

SETH WINTER

Sales are actually going very well.  We’re quite pleased, and we don’t lose sight of the fact that we have the most significant event that exists in all sports and entertainment every two years.  So, not losing sight of that, we’re very pleased coming out of Beijing, which was a, a Games in which we reported doing about eight hundred fifty million dollars of revenue on the national side.  Right now we see about a hundred million dollar more revenue in what is a, um, a taped Games in some ways, versus a live Games.  So we’re very pleased about that, the advertisers have been engaged with us for almost two years now.  As Mark said, they’ve been activating in an unprecedented fashion.  We see an absolute flurry of interest in the games, and we continue to be in the market, we continue to try to monetize the games, and we’re, again, very pleased.  There is a broad spectrum of categories that are represented.  I don’t think there’s any category that’s not represented.  Some of them are exclusive, some of them are non-exclusive.  Our digital capabilities have really accelerated this Games, which has been responsible for a lot of the increase in revenue, so I would say we couldn’t ask for a better story right now, and as we focus on London, um we are equally, if not more focused on Sochi and Rio right now, because we’re kind of at the, the last inning of, um, of London, but we’re in the, um, pre-game warm-up’s for Sochi and Rio, so we’re very, very happy about that.  Doing very well.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

John, as far as marketing an event this big, how do you even start?

JOHN MILLER

It’s a massive event, and as, to match that, this will be our biggest campaign ever.  This is my tenth, along with Bob, and now because we have the resources of Comcast, in addition to all the channels that existed within NBC Universal, we have a massive amount of platforms to promote it.  And including twenty channels, and sixty plus websites, the resources of Comcast and a lot of other things we’re doing.  And it is simply a massive, I thought I’d just run through very quickly, we have sort of an eight tiered campaign, I will do this very quickly for you, because it could be, I can get in deep on it, but…  First of all, it is a massive promotion on NBC that started basically a year out, twenty-five hundred gross ratings points, over twenty-five different pieces of creative, it’s a massive amount.  On the NBC affiliates, they have, they run additional amount of spots, local stories, and also they have the Olympic Zone Show, which is a half hour show that’s in Prime Access leading into us every night.  Our distribution partners, which is the cable, all the MVPD’s, they’re doing the significant amount of the heavy lifting on the authentication messaging, but also have VOD, Broadband and local athletes, that we have created spots for them to help their local efforts.  In addition to that the NBC Universal cross channel, you may have heard about the symphony priorities that we have the Olympics is a gold level symphony priority, it’s our top level, that means the entire company will be due every, everything for three weeks to launch the games.  That begins on July 9th and it is a massive amount.  In addition to that, Comcast brings its own special, unique flavor to it, through its customer base, touching the customers in a number of unique ways that only a direct connection can be made as a, an MVPD can be made with its customer base.  We also have a significant amount of out of home efforts, um, including Wal Mart, Best Buy, PRN, you can see the list behind me, it’s a significant amount that we provide material to them.  We also have digital partnerships, and this is for the first time, because we have partnerships with YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, and we think this is going to be the most social Games ever, and we’re taking full advantage of that.  And then if we haven’t reached anybody through all of those efforts, we do have a little bit of paid media that we run toward the end of the, end of the games.  But mostly, the important thing, in addition to all of the ways that we do that, is the creative that goes into it, and we have three different sort of priorities that we, we do.   First of all, you hear storytelling, and that’s an important hallmark of the NBC Olympic tradition.  So we want to communicate that.  Also, Seth sells primarily, this is one effort where we actually sell homes.  Usually you sell demos, but we sell homes.  So we want to try to reach the thirty-five plus audience that has the institutional memory of the game.  But the most important thing is reaching the viewer twelve to thirty-four.  This is the new generation of Olympic fans, and we want to try to reach them.   So, I’m going to sell you three different spots that really go after each of those things.  First one is about storytelling, you may be familiar with it from Beijing.  The second one is focused in on one of the key athletes who we’re focusing in on, but we do it in sort of a, we think a youthful way.  And the final one talks about teamwork, which is one of the ways that we think we can generate interest in the thirty-five plus.  Let’s run the spots.

[FIRST VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

 

ANNOUNCER (video)

Michael Phelps… [CROWD NOISE]  …here it comes!  The US has done it!  Phelps to the wall, and it smashes the world record.  Yes, Olympic history.  [OVERLAPPING VOICES, CROWD NOISE]  …yet again!  One one hundredth of a second.  He’s done it!  History in Beijing for Michael Phelps.  Eight gold medals.  One of the greatest feats in sports history.

[SECOND VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

MAN (video)

Swimming twenty-four/seven, I can’t do that.  I’d go nuts.  I love skateboarding, surfing, dancing.  [LAUGHS]  But when racing time comes, I walk out, step up on the blocks, boom, I’m that racer.  And I take off.  I’m hitting the water like a rocket.

ANNOUNCER (video)

[UNCLEAR] …pushing to the wall!

MAN (video)

I hit the wall, I look up, and I just unleash.  And then I’m back to, laid back…

ANNOUNCER (video)

The Olympics are coming to the networks of NBC.

[THIRD VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

WOMAN (video)

Nothing is like the Olympics, it’s the highest competition in sports that there is.

MAN (video)

It’s the most intense competitive teamwork in sports

MAN (video)

Each person sacrificing for the better of the team.

WOMAN (video)

How are we going to back up each other, how are we going to just leave everything out in the water.

MAN (video)

Everyone is clicking.

WOMAN (video)

We gotta keep it going.

WOMAN (video)

You’re just building off that crowd.

WOMAN (video)

[UNCLEAR]

WOMAN (video)

We feed off of each other.

WOMAN (video)

This is bigger than the moment.  That’s when gold medals are made.

[END VIDEO CLIPS]

JOHN MILLER

So three different sort of approaches, we have twenty-five different creative, we’ve been rolling them out, and we will continue until the games.  But one very important thing that we’re adding this particular time is to communicate to the American public that they can stream thirty-five hundred hours of coverage.  So we’ve done a significant amount of additional creative pieces given to the MVPD’s, we will be running it on the NBC television network, as well as all the cable platforms that are carrying the games.  But we also did something very special, we tried to create a tutorial with the NBC star Carson Daly to try to explain to the viewer without the limits of time, in a thirty second spot, just what is offered, what you have to do to get it, so that people can sort of understand the verification process.  Here is the Carson Daly piece that is playing in all of the MVPD’s.

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

CARSON DALY (video)

I’m Carson Daly.  This summer, America will be watching the London Olympic Games, and NBC Universal will bring you closer than ever with NBC Olympics Live Extra.  For the first time ever, you’ll be able to watch every Olympic event streamed live, on line, or to your mobile device.  All you need to do is follow a few simple steps.  To begin with, you must get CNBC and MSNBC as part of your television package.  If you do, go to NBCOlympics.com/LiveExtra, select your TV provider, then enter your username and password.  If you don’t have one, call your provider and get one.  You’re all set.  There’s no additional fee for this service and your cable subscription will not be changed.  To watch the Olympics live, just go to NBCOlympics.com.  You can also download the NBC Olympics Live Extra App to your smart phone or tablet.  Using the app, just sign in with your username or password.  Now you can take the Olympics with you wherever you go, whether it’s swimming on your smart phone, track and field on your tablet, or kayaking on your computer, watch every thrilling moment streamed live, or catch them later on demand.  Sign up before June 23rd to catch the excitement of the Olympic trials.  You can also enter the NBC Olympics Live Extra sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to the London Games, the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, or other great prizes, like an HD TV.  This summer the Olympics will be as close as your computer or mobile device, with every event streamed live.  But only if you register at NBCOlympics.com/LiveExtra.  Let the games begin.

JOHN MILLER

We distributed those about a month ago, and we continued to play, we revised them because of the date reference that’s in there.  One thing that I would say before I throw it over to Alan, because it’s a little bit of research, and creates a nice little transition, is that we do tracking every week on the awareness and the intent of the games.  Now, the question we ask is, have you heard of the 2012 Summer Olympics from London.  You would think that we would have given enough information there for people to know, but right now the awareness stands at about sixty-five percent.  But more importantly, the intent is at a record high seventy-one.  And to give you a sense of where, like, American Idol is, American Idol has about an eighty-five percent awareness, because it’s been on a long time, it’s been a number one show.  The intent to view of American Idol is about thirty-five.  So we’re nearly double the intent on the Olympics as what is normally thought of as the number one show in prime time television.  So, we’re anticipating, um, a significant amount of interest, and hopefully we can drive that as well as create an awareness until the games, and with that said, let me throw it over to Alan.

ALAN WURTZEL

Thanks John.  Um, I’m a research guy, but don’t worry, I have no slides, so I don’t do any of that.  I, I just tell you a little bit about what it is that research is going to be doing, because we’ll be working with a lot of you folks.  Um, one of the questions I’m asked all the time at this time of year is, you know, how do you think the Olympics will do?  And I know this is going to stun you, but I think these Olympics will be huge.  Um, without question, they’re going to dominate seventeen nights of prime time.  I believe they will rank I the top five of the most watched events in television history, with north of two hundred million viewers.  So, come back and see me on August 14th, but I really believe that that’s what we’re going to have.  And there are many reasons for it that have been brought up.  I want to give you a little bit of context though.  You know, you’ve heard Bob and, and Mark and others talk about the Olympics is not just a sporting event, but it’s much bigger.  But here’s just some interesting information.  Of the people who watch the Beijing Olympics, sixty-nine million of those people who watch Beijing Olympics never watched a single NFL football game that season.  A hundred and eight million Beijing viewers never watched a Major League baseball game.  Ninety-six million of Beijing viewers never watched ESPN on July, August, or September.  So again, it gives you a sense about the magnitude and the difference of the audience that comes to the Olympics.  The other thing we talked about is young viewers, and we’ve always tried to, again, instill an Olympic interest in them, because they don’t come from the generation that knew the Cold War and the, a different way to consume it.  Well, the fact of the matter is that the digital platforms that we’ve been employing, that we really started in earnest in Beijing, have had a major impact on the interest and the consumption of the Olympics among younger consumers.  Um, the Beijing Olympics, when that really began adults eighteen to twenty-four, young consumers, were up twenty-five percent in terms of their viewing over those who watched it in Athens, and eighteen to thirty-four is up twelve percent.  And a lot of that we attribute to the fact that it’s on many, many platforms that are relative to them.  And finally, it’s a, it’s an amazing cold viewing opportunity.  In other words, families can watch together on television programs that they normally watch in different rooms throughout the normal, you know, sort of the season.  Seventy-one percent of kids watch prime time Olympics with their parents.  So it’s an opportunity to have a little bit of family bonding.  But the whole point of this thing really is that I don’t think you should think of the Olympics as just a TV event anymore.  It truly is a multi-media event of tremendous proportion.  And that really brings me to the second point.  One of our jobs at the Olympics is to answer a lot of the questions that have been raised today.  How are people going to consume these things over cross platforms?  How are they going to be using things like tablet and mobile and streaming in ways that we really don’t understand yet?  Well, for a research geek like myself, the Olympics is a wonderful laboratory.  In fact, we dub it the billion dollar lab, because what we find is that the fact that it has an enormous amount of content across these platforms, the fact that it gets an enormous amount of use, which means that we can measure things we normally can’t measure, and the fact that it, it basically lasts over seventeen days, so we can see trends and, and behaviors, um, emerging, and evolving over time, gives us a great insight in seeing the future of media consumption.  And that’s what we’re going to try to do.  What cross platform is, and it’s the Holy Grail that isn’t really being measured right now, is the ability to take an individual, and understand who they consume content, in this case the Olympics, on television, on PC internet, on mobile, and on tablet.  And we have a number of initiatives that we’re working on with a number of partners that are designed to give us an insight to that in the real world which isn’t being done by anybody right now.  And so, a couple of research predictions: the first thing, I think mobile, which was emerging in Vancouver, will finally be ready for prime time.  As we go into London, about half of all, um, hand held phones will be smart phones, which enable the consumer to access video in a very, you know, positive and, and effective way.  The second thing is that we think that cross platform behavior will promote a lot of simultaneous media use, people using two and sometimes three devices at the same time.  And you’ve also heard social media will play an enormously important role.  This will be the first Twitter Olympics, and we’re going to spend a lot of time trying to understand how people are connecting with each other, and what it means.  And, you know, in the past we’ve always tried to share the initial insights we had with you all during the Games, and then obviously a wrap-up at the end of the Games, and that’s what we hope to do in this one as well.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Bob will actually be tweeting everything live from London.  We have time for one question, we want to get to Steve Burke right away, so… All right, you were first.  What have you got?  Hold on.  Wait.  You know you have to have a mic.  OK. [LAUGHS]

ED HULA

All right, Ed Hula with Around the Rings, Seth, the question is for you, you said, um, you know, you’re very pleased with ad sales for the Olympics, what does that mean?  Are ads sold out?  How much of them are sold, and uh, is London an easier sell than past Olympics?

SETH WINTER

Um, I wouldn’t say it’s easier than past Olympics, but I think the importance of sports has resonated increasingly with advertisers, so they’re drawn to sports, and, and again, as I said, this transcends sports, this is a hybrid sports and entertainment platform, that as Alan said, is two hundred million people, so there’s a lot of interest.  I wouldn’t say more or less than Beijing.  We’re pleased because we go into an Olympics with certain projections that people like Steve and Laz and Ted asked us to hit, and if we hit them and exceed them it makes me happy because I stay employed another week or so. But the games are well beyond our reasonable expectations.  We’re going to be in business during the Games as well, because when the ratings come in, we obviously reserve some inventory for any potential disasters that we can’t foresee.  As, as Alan said, we think the ratings are going to be nothing short of scintillating, so we’re ready to go back into the market, we have a strategy around that and we’ll continue to monetize it up until the logs are closed on the last Sunday.  But we’re very happy.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

All right, these guys are all going to be available afterwards if you have any more questions.  Gentleman, thank you very much.  And as the chairs will magically disappear, we are left with one.  I present to you now, the CEO of NBC Universal, Steve Burke.

 

STEVE BURKE

Thank you, Michelle.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Pick a chair, any chair.

 

STEVE BURKE

Which one.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

You get to have whatever one you want.  [LAUGHS]

STEVE BURKE

Thank you, Michelle.  I’ll be very brief, and then take a few questions.  It’s an exciting time to be at NBC Universal.  It feels just like yesterday, although it was probably about fifteen, sixteen months ago, right after the NBC Universal deal with Comcast was done, and after I showed up, that we got in a conference room in this building to figure out what our presentation would be to the International Olympic Committee for future Games.  And it was a great learning experience for me to be in the room and get to see all of the talented people, many of whom you’ve seen today, that go into making the NBC Universal Olympics Broadcast experience what it is.  After sort of a few hours in the, in the room planning for the presentation, we came to the conclusion that we had so many talented people with so much great experience, that we should bring a very large group to the pitch.  So, I think we brought about fifteen people to the presentation, and made some of the points that you’ve heard today.  First that there’s just a tremendous experience base.  We started off the presentation to all the International Olympic Committee Members by having everyone talk about how many years they’ve been associated with the Olympics, and how many Olympics they had broadcast.  And as we went around the room, people would say, I’ve done twelve Olympics, I’ve done fourteen Olympics, I’ve done eight Olympics, and what you realize is that embedded in this organization, that experience base, after, after a while you get very, very good at what you do, and it’s unlike anything that I think exists anywhere else.  In addition to the people and the experience, I really can’t highlight enough the unique way that NBC Sports, and now all of NBC Universal has told stories.  And you can start to see that in our broadcast now as we start to build those stories, whether it’s Phelps and Lochte, or some of the other stories that are starting to develop that ultimately creates this very, very large audience that goes way beyond the traditional sports audience, uh, that would see a football game or, or a baseball game, as Alan mentioned.  We also realize this, since this will be the first Olympics of the post-new NBCU era, my first Olympics, Mark Lazarus’ first Olympics, that we have the opportunity to, to build on this great lineage, great people, and great success formula, and do some things that were new and different.  And so I think you’ve seen and heard today some of the things we’re doing with new media, some of the people that we’re introducing into the process.  Um, we’re going to try to, try to stay very true to what got us here, but also do some things that are new and different.  Um, we’re also trying, I think, to amplify, NBC Sports is doing this in general with our NBC Sports Channel, and the Golf Channel, some of the assets that the Comcast deal brought, and what I’m starting to become convinced of is that we’re doing things for sports like golf and hockey and horse racing and the NFL, because we have all these assets, we’re bringing those sports to a different level.  And our dream would be to do that with the Olympics.  I see that when I, when I watch the swimming trials, and you can go back and forth, between channels and, and different assets.  And the final point I’d like to make is, for all of the people who work in our company, wherever you work, whether you work at NBC Prime Time, USA, Bravo, CNBC, the Olympics are both a catalytic event in terms of how the company thinks about itself, but also a catalytic event in terms of how we promote other parts of the company.  And there’s a real, we call it symphony, but there’s a real magic that goes into getting twenty cable channels, prime time, news, all different parts of our company, Telemundo, focused on an event like the Olympics for seventeen days, and then on, you’ll see during those seventeen days, we’re going to try to set up the fall launch on NBC Prime Time as well as we can, we’re going to launch the Lorax DVD, we’re going to launch other things that are going on in other parts of the company, revitalize the Today show, so hopefully getting the entire company to work together in a way that I think is, is unique to NBC Universal, to make the Olympics as great as possible, but then turn that favor back to the different parts of the company during the seventeen days I think will be another textbook case of how this company uniquely can support major, major initiatives like the Olympics.  So, everybody here in this building is getting more excited by the day, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s only a month away.  In some ways I wish it was tomorrow, but it’ll be here before we know it.  Really glad to share the story with you, and to know that all of the people that you’ve heard from are really excited.  There, there is probably, if you’re in this business, there is absolutely nothing more exciting than the Olympics, and it’s almost here, and we, we are almost ready to do our thing.  So, with that I’ll take some questions.

 

MAN

[INAUDIBLE] …experience level that you mentioned?

STEVE BURKE

Well, if you’re at Comcast you’re in the business of bringing all these new technologies to play.  And so Comcast very early on, Comcast cable decided that during the period of the Olympics, the core of all of their marketing campaigns is going to be the Olympics.  And so there will be a tremendous amount of video on demand programming, every gold medal during the Olympics will be on Comcast video on demand.  A lot of high speed internet, connection with the authenticated and, and live streaming.  And really, more broadly, as a rallying cry for all of the people that work at Comcast.  So, all of the twenty some odd million video customers, and the eighteen or so million high speed data customers are going to get a lot of Olympics reinforcement, which, in theory, should be very good for Comcast cable, but also very good for NBC Universal, and everything we’re doing.  And to me, I’m hoping that it’s a, another textbook case of why we did this deal, why this deal we believe is good for Comcast as well as NBC Universal.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Next question, and you know you have to wait for the mic.  Dave, you broke that rule.  [LAUGHS]  Back row?

MAN

Do you think that it’s likely that kind of the new technologies that have come into play for the Olympics, in terms of making, you know, all these events streaming on line, do you think that that’s going to have a carry-over, you know, when, when regular pro-, programming goes back into effect?  Do you think that those same platforms and technologies will change the way that NBC offers, um, programming going forward?

STEVE BURKE

Well, Alan Wurtzel, who just spoke to you about research, has called this the billion-dollar lab.  I mean, it’s a great way, because the Olympics effect more people than any other programming in America, it’s a great way to really see what’s happening with the new technologies.  That occurred in Beijing.  I think that will occur in London.  More broadly, I think what we’re finding is that these new technologies, iPads, video on demand, internet streaming, if you’re careful, and you do them, and, and you, and you use those technologies to, to work together, they can enhance the entire sport.  And, you know, it’s, it’s been interesting, and I think no coincidence that we put a lot more NHL games out in a lot more different places, and all of a sudden NHL ratings are up twenty-five percent.  We do complimentary coverage on the Golf Channel and NBC Sports on major golf events, that happens.  We get all three of the big horse races, and really use those and promote those and go back and forth, and that goes up.  And there are traditionalists inside this building, as well as outside of this building, who say, now wait a minute, be careful about cannibalization.  But, in a really highly fragmented world, I think more is better if it’s done the right way and, and they, they’re complimentary, and the different venues promote each other and do it the right way.  And I’m very optimistic that we’re going to prove that in London.  And as we’re proving that in sports, we have the same kind of philosophy with our cable channels in other parts of the, the company.  The fact of the matter is, a lot of people want to watch television with an iPad that is doing something, and you can, you can say I’d wish they’d put the iPad away, but the reality is, the iPad is there, and people are going to use it.  And you’re better off having that iPad being used for things that are complimentary with that linear broadcast than not.  So I, I think not only will we prove some things in the, in London, but I think those learnings will get exported to other parts of the company.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

We’ve got time for one more.  Thank you.

ED HULA

All right, Ed Hula with Around the Rings, you have the Games for another eight years, um, what, what sort of, uh, what, what do the Games mean for NBC in terms of prestige, and uh, and can you talk a little bit about that?

STEVE BURKE

Well, the scary thing about soon after the two companies, after the deal was done, getting on an airplane and flying over to Lausanne was that we knew that it would be a binary moment.  We would either come home with the Games, or we would come home without the Games, and as the new people showing up in this building, it would have been an awful thing to come home without the Games.  We feel like we were very fortunate, because not only did we come home with the Games, we came home with four games, we call it two quads, but eight years worth of Games.  We thought that was very important, because as you move the Games around different properties, as you experiment with these new technologies, the investments and the, the brand-building that you do, you want to amortize over an eight year period.  So we, we thought getting four games rather than two was a big, big deal.  The second thing is, we wanted to make sure that we got the games at a price that would not cause this company every two years to lose a lot of money.  And we believe we’ve done that.  Basically the way to think about the four future games is, we get those at the same price that we get London, adjusted for the fact that some are winter and some are summer, but basically, unlike other sports where there are very, very large increases in rights fees when they get renewed, we, we got a chance to get four more games at roughly the same price.  So over time, as these, these properties become more and more valuable in a world that is increasingly fragmented, and over time as you get some media inflation, some other things, we think we’re going to make money on these games.  So, for a whole variety of reasons, they’re very, very much tied up with the brand of NBC, the way that this company operates, the soul of the company, the culture of the company, and by getting eight years and Seth said it very quickly, but we’re a hundred million dollars ahead so far, I think his, is the fairest thing to say, a hundred million dollars ahead in terms of ad sales for these games versus where we were with Beijing.

SETH WINTER

That’s just nationally.

STEVE BURKE

And that’s just national.  And that’s going to continue to ripple through and hopefully grow over time.  So for, for a lot of different checkpoints, for the soul of the company, for the brand, for the financial side of the business, for showing off different parts of the company, for the efforts that we call symphony, there’s nothing more important to us than the Olympics, and we’re really excited about the calculus that we went through, and the bet that we made, because it was a bet at the time we did it.  It was soon after we had shown up, the economy wasn’t doing as well as it is today and I was a very, very long term four billion dollar bet.  But I think we’re very, very, very pleased that we made it, and feel like it’s got a very high percentage chance to pay off.  So thank you all for coming, hopefully you learned a few things.  If nothing else, you learned how excited we are about it.  And see some of you in London, and I’m sure everybody’s going to be watching.  So, thanks for coming.

 

MICHELLE BEADLE

Thank you, Steve. [APPLAUSE]  For those of you who are hungry, and I know I am, there is lunch in the hallway, feel free to ask any questions of anyone, you see them roaming around out there, and thank you for coming.

[MUSIC]

[END]