'Leave your TV on' – No sleep for Olympics coverage

Advertiser Staff and News Services

One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, watch ... five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, watch ...

Welcome to the Olympic Games from Athens, where you can watch around the clock just about every night.

NBC, which paid almost $800 million for television rights and might take in $1 billion, will provide unprecedented coverage on five networks in Hawai'i — NBC (local affiliate News8 KHNL), MSNBC, CNBC, USA and Bravo.

"Leave your TV on and don't go to sleep," said Nanette Shimomura, programming coordinator of Oceanic-Time Warner Cable of Hawai'i, whose company handles programming for four of the networks.

The eyeball marathon unofficially begins at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow, with the U.S. soccer team, led by Mia Hamm, taking on Greece on MSNBC.

Because of the time difference — Athens is 13 hours ahead of Hawai'i — events may take place while you are sleeping.

Opening ceremonies begin at 7:45 a.m. Friday, Hawai'i time. But NBC mandates that its affiliates telecast the event in prime time, so it will be shown locally about 12 hours later.

Same goes for the closing ceremonies on Aug. 29.

Viewers will see only a few events live, because "the transmissions (from Athens to the main network) aren't live," Shimomura said.

In other words, even if you're seeing a "live" feed, it doesn't mean the event is happening at that time.

Here are some other TV highlights:

• For most of the 19 days, you will see Games coverage for at least 20 hours a day, with networks overlapping each other. On nearly half of these days, coverage will be 22 hours.
• KHNL's weekend daytime coverage will be live. The rest will be delayed.
• CNBC will provide 10 consecutive hours on some days.
• Bravo has the graveyard shift, providing coverage from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. on some days.
• Coverage will be provided from 485 camera positions for all 28 sports, an Olympic first.
• Mainland viewers will get 24-hour coverage, because the games also will be telecast on Telemundo and NBC High Definition, which aren't available via Oceanic here. If you have a satellite, it is possible to catch those stations.
• The trade paper Variety says ad spots are going for as much as $700,000 per 30 seconds.

Oh, and for your viewing displeasure, the networks have the right to change their coverage at anytime.

Gannett News Service contributed to this report.