NBC executives know darn well that their vast coverage of the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021 led to vast confusion. Though the 13-hour time difference was beyond its control, NBC didn’t help itself with a confusing interface on its nascent streaming service, Peacock. It further angered viewers by putting men’s basketball games behind the streamer’s paywall.
For the Paris Summer Games, which begin July 26, the network said it learned its lesson. “In Tokyo, frankly, we didn’t do a very good job for our customers,” Mark Lazarus, NBCUniversal Media Group chairman, said at a preview event Wednesday in New York. “We didn’t exactly deliver what we said we were going to deliver.
” This time, executives said, not only will Peacock be easier to navigate, but NBCU will air more live daytime hours of Olympics coverage on broadcast and linear TV than ever. On cable, USA will have 24/7 coverage, including U.S.
men’s and women’s basketball, and CNBC, E! and GOLF also will air programming. Peacock, though, will make all 5,000-plus hours of coverage available to subscribers. It also took a page out of the NFL’s playbook, applying the concept behind “NFL RedZone” to the Olympics with “Gold Zone,” a live whiparound show that will stream from 6 a.
m. to 4 p.m.
every day of competition. And NBC swears it all will be easy to find. “One of the key principles as we were developing our Olympics interface was effortless discovery,” Peacock president Kelly Campbell said.
