By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service

WHO'S COUNTING?

How big is this year's Olympics coverage? NBC says it includes: A helicopter, an airship, a tethered blimp, 26 semi-trucks with equipment - and 300 other vehicles. 3,134 staffers in Athens, dwarfing the size (550) of the entire U.S. Olympic team. Those staffers have 70,026 nights of hotel reservations; they'll be served 185,400 meals and they'll down an estimated 260,000 cups of coffee. A 75,000-square-foot studio, plus compounds at the various venues, totaling another 154,418 square feet. 3,756 pieces of furniture. Don't believe everything you see, though. At the Winter Olympics, the cozy fireplace fire was just a videotape loop. 485 camera positions. That's despite the fact that many events will be in the same few places; half of the 28 sporting events will be in two venues. 30,000 blank videotapes and another 10,000 with archived video on them. There will be plenty of places to play them; NBC will have 400 VCRs and 2,500 color monitors. 1,210 hours of TV and cable time. Compare that to the 1976 Olympics, which totaled 76.5 hours. 100,000 feet of fiber optic and triax cable. That's almost (but not quite) the length of the original marathon run. And finally - $1 billion. That's how much trade paper Variety says NBC could gross for its Olympic ad spots, which are going for as much as $700,000 per 30 seconds. The direct profits are mild; the network paid almost $800 million for rights, Variety says, and also has production expenses. Still, the Olympics could provide a boost for many of NBC's assets, from Today to the cable networks to the upcoming fall lineup.

During the Olympics, television alternates between action and aesthetics, between the whoosh of competition and the psychology of the athletes' lives.

This year the action and the whoosh will prevail with the most comprehensive Olympic coverage ever via NBC Universal networks. The 24-hour per day coverage will span seven networks under the NBC umbrella, including NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Bravo, Telemundo and NBC's new HDTV network.

"Our goal is to have very event-driven programming," says David Neal, the executive vice president of NBC Olympics.

He's gone into some previous Olympics with more than 100 features taped in advance.

This year, with 1,210 TV and cable hours to fill, he has only 80 films, and none much longer than two minutes.

Those films still serve a purpose, Neal says, introducing viewers to unfamiliar events. One of Neal's favorites looks at the 20th anniversary of the Olympics' first women's cross-country race.

More than half of the films will be about athletes from outside the United States, he says. Dick Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Sports, is trying to nudge past the "America against the world" days. "If you went anywhere else in the world, you'd find that we're the least nationalistic in our coverage," Ebersol says.

That's one of many issues NBC faces. They include:

• Key sports: A few events dominate, Ebersol says. "About 60 percent of the primetime coverage has been a mix of swimming, diving, gymnastics and track-and-field."

• Basketball: The Dream Team days of the best players on the Olympic team have passed.

Things are different in most Olympic sports, Costas says. "The place where they make their name and validate their reputations is always the Olympics."

That's not true of basketball, so Ebersol is happy with the stars that are showing up.

• News: NBC News has two reporters, Bob Hager and Kelly O'Donnell, assigned to Ebersol's unit. There is much that they could report on, from drug controversies to the potential for terrorism.

"I think where our employees work and sleep will be incredibly safe," Ebersol says. "But I would not be encouraging our employees to wander off to a discotheque at 2 o'clock in the morning."

• High definition: A separate signal will be sent on the HDTV channel operated by many NBC affiliates, Ebersol says. For now, that will stick to events happening in four neighboring stadiums. Things will be different in 2006, when the Winter Olympics are in Torino, Italy, he says.

"We will do the Torino games completely in HD."

Timing is everything Athens is seven hours ahead of New York, so when Bob Costas starts his primetime coverage at 8 p.m. EDT, it will be 3 a.m. in Greece. "There's no way to do that live," said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports.

Primetime events are taped with live commentary. When they're shown, Costas will already know the winners. "You can't give the result away," Costas says, "but neither can you feign anticipation."

The high-interest events will be saved for primetime. Others, however, will be live on cable. When Bravo starts its coverage at 5 a.m. weekdays, it will be noon in Athens. Some live events will even pop up late at night.