NBC hits the Great Wall

Protests stymie network's Olympic plans

For NBC, the headlong plunge into the Olympics in Beijing poses a higher-than-usual degree of difficulty.

Protests directed at China's human-rights record -- yielding chaotic images as the Olympic torch toured Europe, before its lone U.S. stop in San Francisco -- threaten to turn the marathon leading toward the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies into a gantlet. And they may portend more tension during the Games themselves, with China admitting April 10 that it had cracked down on a ring intending to kidnap athletes, journalists and tourists.

The network, which paid nearly $900 million for rights to the '08 Games, faces a formidable challenge: It aims to broadcast the Olympics as a sporting event and provide a window into Chinese culture. Tough-minded coverage, however, risks alienating its host, while any shortcomings could expose the networkto accusations of whitewashing Beijing's reported human-rights abuses.

Past Olympics have been a major moneymaker for the General Electric-owned network. All told, NBC has invested $5.5 billion in rights fees for seven Games from 2000 through 2012.

Televising the Olympics has also become a corporatewide endeavor and, this year, a more enormous undertaking than ever before.

NBC's collective telecasts will balloon to a staggering 3,600 hours -- 1,000 more than all previous summer Olympics combined -- spread across NBC, Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo and a half-dozen cable networks. The planned 212 hours of daily coverage will cram the equivalent of eight days of television into each 24-hour period.