Olympics

We vote tandem trampoline in 2012.

• Related: USA Today's Erik Brady provides a minute-by-minute account of yesterday's Today show that would make a Hollywood screenwriter blush (with embarrassment not jealousy): "Michael Phelps, god of the Games, strolls in from Mount Olympus. He is wearing a knit shirt, shorts and flip-flops. The crowd beseeches him. Matt claps Phelps on the shoulder, hale fellow well met." He breathlessly continues the account, describing the NBC staff as they, "move nimbly to a chaotic choreography." (via Newsblues)

THR's Paul J. Gough and James Hibberd write about the ratings for the Olympics as this non-Phelps week begins. They also write that Olympics programming on the NBCU cable networks is performing better than the 2004 Athens games.

NBC has seen strong gains for its Olympic-related programming on its cable channels...MSNBC is averaging 650,000 viewers (up 22%) and CNBC 606,000 (up 165%).

NBC's Brian Williams is doing his part as journalist and diplomat while reporting from Bei-jing. This week, he was a guest on CCTV-9, the English language channel from China Central TV. And the host of that show did her research. She asked Williams how he would compare his generation of anchors with "the previous generation, let's say Tom Brokaw." Williams:

Tom Brokaw's here with me on this trip. The other evening he was with us in Tiananmen and I wouldn't want it any other way. He did our last live broadcast from there in 1987 and so I don't look at Tom and see a generational difference as much as I see this great continuum at these television networks in America. We've had great names — I don't count myself as as one of them — but I've only had what I still consider Tom's job for three years and I hope you have mentors as terrific and powerful in our great shared business as I have in Tom Brokaw.

The AP's David Bauder writes about what might be in store for the networks of NBC Universal next week with the Michael Phelps show near an end. Bauder also writes about the off-the-field news and how NBC has reported it:

During the first week, NBC has done little to upset its hosts. Two of the biggest stories — the stabbing of two Americans by a suicidal man and revelation that a cute girl singing during the opening ceremony was a lip-syncher — were covered during the daytime. But the stabbings were only briefly mentioned during prime-time and the lip-synching wasn't mentioned at all. Attendance problems at venues also hasn't drawn notice.

Except for a Tom Brokaw retrospective on opening night and Bob Costas' thorough interview with President Bush, the focus has been almost entirely on sport. Mary Carillo has kept her travelogues light. Mark Mullen's hard look at China's effort to groom Olympic stars was shown on the "Nightly News."

So, we come to find out, and if you've been listening closely you may have heard it, that the pronunciation of the host city of the XXIX Olympiad hasn't been consistent on NBC. Nightly News anchor Brian Williams calls is Bay-jing. But Bob Costas and Meredith Vieira and others are calling it Bay-zhing.

So which is it?

Williams is right, if you talk to experts in the Chinese language.

Kaiser Kuo, who put together an online guide for journalists covering the Olympics, writes, "For you mousse-coiffed, Mr. Gravitas TV anchor types and you sotto voce public radio types, please oh please stop saying 'Bay-zheeng.'

In a wide-ranging interview this morning on CNBC's Squawk Box, NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker talked about the success of the Olympics, the challenges ahead for the network and the question that never seems to go away: the future of NBCU within GE. Zucker:

Jeff Immelt who runs GE has obviously been clear on this for a long time that NBC Universal has been an important part of GE. I think one of the great things to come out of this week and the week ahead, we're only halfway through the Olympics, is that people will continue to understand how important the company is to GE and, again, I think the most important thing to come out of this week is really the power of network television.

And there were the standard, ingratiating moments, like Carl Quintanilla calling Zucker a "genius" for sticking to the tape delayed Opening Ceremony. "Let me be clear," Zucker said, "I'm not the genius. The geniuses are the folks at NBC Olympics and NBC Sports led by Dick Ebersol who has done a tremendous job in producing these games."

Zucker also talks about The Weather Channel acquisition, the future of NBC's ownership of Telemundo and the challenges for NBC's entertainment division.

Click continued to read the entire transcript...

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For the second time this week, MSNBC has interrupted Olympics coverage to carry live a statement from Pres. Bush regarding the situation in Georgia. For MSNBC, it meant breaking into the USA — China Women's Volleyball match which had just gotten underway. After the five-minute statement from the president, the network quickly returned to the match in Beijing.

Fox News and CNN also carried the president's remarks.

In what could be the biggest news story of this coming weekend, we receive this from an anonymous tipster:

NBC giving serious consideration to airing Saturday's prime-time Olympic coverage live in all time zones due to Michael Phelps' potential 8th gold medal. This would allow full network to show race as it is happening. Otherwise, West Coast viewers would see it three hours after it takes place. Final decision may be made late Thursday night EDT.

Thus far, the games have been on a standard time zone broadcast schedule. The final event is the Men's 4x100m Medley Relay set for Sunday morning Beijing time (10:58pmET / 7:58pmPT Saturday night). However, it's still not determined if Phelps would be among the four swimmers in this event. That decision will most likely be made after Friday night's (ET) 100m Butterfly.

Last night, Brian Williams began Nightly News telling viewers, "as far as we can tell and as far looking back this is the first live network evening newscast to originate from here since 1987, the last time NBC Nightly News broadcast from here."

If Brian had only checked TVNewser from his Blackberry in Tiananmen Square a few hours before showtime he'd have seen the story we wrote. It included the memorable "pulled plug" moment from the CBS Evening News during the student uprising in May, 1989.

So Brian went on the Daily Nightly and fessed up:

It wasn't the most momentous mistake we've ever made, but wrong is wrong. We were alerted to our error the moment we got off the air — by a posting (relayed to us from New York) on a website that covers our industry, saying Dan Rather had broadcast live from the Square for a portion of the CBS Evening News on May 20 of 1989 — right before their plug was pulled and they were forced to finish broadcasting from another nearby location. Tom Brokaw, here with us, remembered it that way too with the prompting that the posting provided.

Williams goes on to write that he called former CBS Evening News producer Lane Venardos, whose daughter Kelly is a producer for Nightly. Venardos "confirmed that we had indeed screwed up," Williams wrote.

Hey, we understand. It's not easy doing Nightly News at 6:30 in the morning.

For the next two weeks MSNBC is calling itself The Place for the Olympics. With as many as 12 hours a day of events then a two-hour wrap up show, politics will take a back seat, relegated to Hardball at 7pmET and Countdown at 8. And while it may take war somewhere much closer than South Ossetia (like, say, New Jersey) to interrupt Olympics programming, MSNBC's two-hour wrap up show (5pm-7pmET) has shown it will cover breaking news, then move right back to athlete profiles, medal counts and putting Willie Geist on Olympic display. (Today: sabre!)

Just hours after returning home from China, President Bush held a Rose Garden event talking about the progress in ending the conflict in South Ossetia. Hosts Tiki Barber and Jenna Wolfe in Beijing tossed back to anchor Tamron Hall in New York, who introduced and wrapped up the President's brief remarks.

The show was also The Place for Promotions: Keith Olbermann made a rare MSNBC daytime appearance, Chris Matthews was on in the 6pmET hour to promote Hardball and Brian Williams was live promoting his Tiananmen Square broadcast.