For weeks it had been building, the pressure that arises every two years — alternately in the winter, then the summer — to drop what you're doing and watch the Olympics.

This summer, NBC Universal (a unit of General Electric Co.), shelled out $900 million for exclusive American broadcast rights to cover the Beijing Olympics, and wanted a hefty audience for it.

Multitudes heard the call. An average of 34.2 million Americans caught the telecast of last Friday's opening. By Sunday, when swimmer Michael Phelps (the reigning star of "America's Got Talent: Olympic Edition") won, with his U.S. teammates, his second-and-counting gold medal of the Beijing Games, NBCU was claiming 143 million total viewers in the first three days.

It's hard not to fall prey to the Olympics' massive pull. And this year, there's so much more to resist. Some 3,600 hours of this VideOlympiad are available through NBCU's broadcast, cable and Web outlets (plus, in certain hot spots, through the fillings in your teeth). There are 100 sports announcers; nearly 1,100 high-definition cameras; the one and only Michael Phelps.

NBCU bills it as "the most ambitious single media project in history." This isn't just a field day of global proportions. It's a sociocultural, political, capitalistic and — oh, by the way — sports lollapalooza packaged for the screen as heart-and-soul melodrama.

You've been seeing the promotions seemingly since the last Olympic torch was doused, and you've been exposed to the Olympic rings burned into the corner of your screen for every NBC show. NBC knows a little something about programming. Chances are: You've been programmed.

Now one peek at the Olympics can lead to another. You sample a little table tennis, then you're glomming onto the pentathletes (like you ever paid attention to the modern pentathlon before!) on your way to streaming coverage around the clock.