NBC Sports

With China’s strict policy about those who test positive for COVID-19, most of NBC’s announcers for the Beijing Games are stationed stateside. NBC isn’t alone in keeping its announcers home. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has almost all its analysts and announcers working out of studios in Toronto and Montreal. The BBC is also keeping announcers at studios outside London.

Dave Mazza, SVP/CTO for NBC Sports and NBC Olympics discusses the unique challenges that come with being the second consecutive Olympics taking place during a global pandemic as well as issues with weather and accessibility to venues.

As the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games approach and COVID-19 concerns mount, NBC Sports will not send any of its announcing teams to China, a spokesperson said Wednesday afternoon. “The announce teams for these Olympics, including figure skating, will be calling events from our Stamford (Conn.) facility due to COVID concerns,” Greg Hughes, senior vice president communications, NBC Sports, said.

After more than a decade with NBC Sports, Michele Tafoya will work her final game as a sideline reporter for the company at Super Bowl LVI. In a statement, Tafoya suggested that she wanted to explore professional areas outside of NFL sideline reporting.

The Premier League announced the deal on Thursday. NBC will pay more than $2.7 billion to continue showing the world’s richest soccer competition. A person familiar with the deal told The Associated Press it almost triples the value of the U.S. English- and Spanish-language broadcast rights.

The 24-year-old Biles will compete in Tuesday’s balance beam final. She won bronze on beam in Rio de Janeiro five years ago and qualified for the eight-woman final at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre on the first weekend of the Games but removed herself from the team final on July 27 after a shaky performance on vault during the first rotation.

NBC’s Tokyo Olympics are shaping up to be an echo of the 1998 Nagano disaster at CBS, but aberrations aside, the Games will remain sports’ gold standard.

Storage spaces as broadcast booths, Orlando hotels as family-cheering sections and other oddities mark the broadcast of the 2021 improvisational Games. Above, an area of NBC Sports’ Stamford, Conn., offices where highlights will be cut during the Tokyo Olympics.

NBC made the announcement during its primetime Olympics show Friday. Taylor had been with ESPN since 2014 but her contract expired Tuesday. Her last assignment for the network was Tuesday night at the NBA Finals, where she was the pregame and postgame host for the network’s NBA Countdown show.

Molly Solomon, NBC Olympics executive producer, says that the network will not add additional crowd noise to its coverage. The hope is that fans will hear the Games as they haven’t been able to before, whether it is the action in the pool during swimming or conversations between competitors and coaches during gymnastics.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, already the nation’s dominant owner of regional sports networks, has made an offer to acquire NBCUniversal’s seven regional sports networks. If Sinclair succeeds in buying the RSNs, it would add dozens of popular National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball teams to its already vast collection of sports broadcast rights. The deal would also give Sinclair an 8% stake in SportsNet New York, which broadcasts Mets games.

David Mazza, SVP and CTO of NBC Sports Group and NBC Olympics, gives an exclusive look at how the network will navigate COVID restrictions while delivering 1080p HDR and 4K coverage for the first time and the pivotal role distributed workflows will play. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

The National Hockey League has completed its next TV rights package — and for the first time in 16 years, NBC Sports won’t be a part of it. NBC pulled out of negotiations for the partial rights for the league’s next TV deal. WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports will pick up the remainder of the package, sharing rights with ESPN for seven seasons beginning with the 2021-22 seasonth.

The quarterback great joined NBC Sports on Monday, a day after announcing his retirement from the NFL. He will serve as an analyst for Notre Dame games as well as work from the studio during Football Night in America on Sunday nights.

Al Michaels (left) is being pulled from Sunday Night Football this weekend “in accordance with NBCUniversal COVID-19 safety protocols,” NBC Sports said on Friday. Mike Tirico will replace Michaels on the primetime play-by-play.

TV networks are feeling the strains of disappointing NFL ratings, as they are forced to restructure deals with advertisers to make up for the smaller audience, and their opportunity to make money off remaining games during the lucrative holiday season narrows.

Pete Bevacqua, who joined NBC Sports in 2018 as its first president in nearly a decade, has been elevated to the top role at the NBCUniversal-owned unit. Bevacqua, the former CEO of the Professional Golf Association, was named chairman of NBC Sports Group, filling a role that was vacated when Mark Lazarus took on a bigger role within the parent company.

The National Hockey League on Tuesday said its Stanley Cup Qualifiers games will start Aug. 1, with NBC Sports airing up to 120 hours of coverage.

The first live sports events on network TV in more than two months delivered strong ratings Sunday. Fox’s telecast of a NASCAR race in Darlington, S.C., delivered 6.32 million viewers, a 38 percent jump over the previous race on March 8. Like other major pro sports leagues, NASCAR shut down in mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic. NBC also brought back live sports Sunday with a golf event, TaylorMade Driving Relief. Numbers for the four-man skins match, featuring Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff, weren’t available at publication time.

Costs are inhibiting a flood of 4K sports production, but 1080p HDR offers numerous practical advantages, among them that the improvement in picture quality is more readily apparent to consumers than the gain from 4K resolution. Above, Sony tested an 8K camera at the Sony Open in Hawaii last year, but doesn’t expect 8K to be used for regular sports production for several years.

NBC announced on Tuesday that it has promoted Solomon to executive president and producer of the network’s Olympics unit, becoming the first woman to be an executive producer for a network sports division.

The new TrackPass streaming service is part of the NBC Sports Gold service and is expected to debut in December.

“They put you in the best seat in the house,” said Drew Esocoff, who has directed NBC’s Triple Crown telecasts since 2011. “These cameras, whether they’re high-def or 4K, also allow for better manipulation of video: zooming in, zooming out without major degradation of the video quality. It just makes the viewing experience better and you’re also looking at it on high-def monitors. Compared to what you saw 25, 30 years ago, it’s night and day.”