NBCUniversal has plans to build a larger audience for the Paris Olympics with a parade of high-profile celebrities featured in their 7,000 hours of competition coverage and related programming this summer.
“This kind of celebrity wouldn’t have been part of NBC Olympics coverage of the past. Now it’s one of the foundational elements,” Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports, said. “We’ve got to be innovating, trying things differently, trying to match where the media world is in 2024.”
This Olympics will break with previous games in having events streamed live on Peacock. Broadcasts of the past aired popular events on tape delay. The change to live streaming will require having different prime-time programming.
The games will start around 3 a.m. and end around 6 p.m. Eastern time. Paris is six hours ahead of Washington, D.C.
NBC plans to use celebrities Kelly…
