NBC resets focus for Tokyo while looking ahead to Beijing
When Molly Solomon took over as executive producer and president of NBC’s Olympics production unit last November, she expected to be in Tokyo right now with the games in full swing. But with the Summer Olympics postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, Solomon and her team have reset their countdown clocks while trying to adjust to a new set of challenges.
Any Olympics provides plenty of compelling storylines, but Solomon says Tokyo’s turn takes on bigger importance with everything that has transpired worldwide this year.
“We have tried to reset everything because what we are working on is even more important than forever,” Solomon said. “The impact of the Olympics is profound. The delay only adds to the promise.”
Everybody from NBC to athletes and prominent business executives around the world are hoping the Tokyo Games delivers on that promise after the pandemic created numerous issues for the Olympic movement on multiple levels.
NBC — which has the U.S. media rights through the 2032 Summer Games — had already done most of its features and taped promos before the International Olympic Committee postponed the games in March. With hardly any access to athletes currently, the network is asking them to chronicle their revised training routines for any updates or new features.
Other issues include how many people NBC will send to Tokyo. There are usually more than 2,000 in the contingent, but that is likely to be cut back, with an additional percentage of the production emanating from NBC Sports Group’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn.
Solomon said that even though the production processes might change, how the network will cover the games will remain the same.
“We document the competition and the inspiring stories and introduce the host city,” she said. “After everything we have been through, people are craving anything from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
“It is still about the storytelling and the fascination with the athletes. People know Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, but there will be other athletes emerge as well,” Solomon said. “There’s always an interesting mix of familiar and new athletes.”
With three straight Summer and Winter Games being held in Asia, NBC has the advantage of airing most of the popular sports live in prime time in the Eastern and Central U.S. time zones. The Mountain and Pacific zones also will have live prime-time events after NBC went to a prime time-plus model instead of late-night shows in 2018.
But NBC also is facing a mammoth task that hasn’t been encountered since 1984, which is one network doing two Olympics in a six-month span. However, NBC’s task is more daunting when one considers the hours of production involved now.
ABC aired 63 hours from the Sarajevo Winter
Games and 180 from the Los Angeles Summer Games, which were both records at the time.
NBC’s coverage from Tokyo will be more than 7,000 hours and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games 2,500. While ABC used only one channel for its coverage, NBC will again air across many channels along with online streaming.
“The fact that it is a big challenge is even more attractive to our team because the Olympics are the most complex to produce,” Solomon said. “The good thing about Beijing is there is a familiarity with the area (from the 2008 Summer Games), with the only new areas we have to see are the mountain venues.”