Byline: TOM HOFFARTH
MEDIA
No matter how the numbers are pulverized, even with NBC's high-tech abacus, nothing quite adds up right for these Beijing Olympics from a TV viewer's perspective. We're overwhelmed with overwhelming whelmingness.
To the consumer of the Peacock's great wall of coverage, so much can be digested over 17 days that by the time the fortune cookie comes, a Madden-bustin' NFL season may seem tame.
If you're brave enough, take off your smog mask, grab a big gulp of oxygen - preferably from NBC's aptly-named cable partner -- and see if these numbers don't take your breath away:
Two: The number of years it would take to experience in all 3,600 hours that NBC plans to deliver from China, if your job was only to watch the Olympics fulltime Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. -- factoring in a lunch break, some vacation, and a sick day or two, plus a note from your doctor.
18: Hours into the future Beijing will be from our standard of sundial watching. Meaning, when many of you wake up this morning, the Opening Ceremonies will be just about closing, but your media blackout won't be lifted until 7:30 p.m. tonight when Bob Costas and Matt Lauer bring you up to (tape-delayed) speed.
But do watch anyway.
Says David Neal, the NBC Olympics executive producer: "I've seen three dress rehearsals. America will be left speechless."
Yeah, but at least we have freedom of speechlessness.
17: Predicted server crashes -- one a day -- from the NBC control room as it tries to sustain some 2,200-plus live streaming video hours using the "Saturday Night Live" studios at Rockefeller Center as ground zero.
"NBCOlympics.com will be the most technically ambitious Internet project to date," says Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics. "We provide an interactive environment around data and video consumption that will engage the viewer."
That which doesn't kill you apparently engages you.
2,900: Employees used by NBC for this exercise. Of that, 106 are broadcasters. Of that, about two dozen will not be in Beijing, but in New York, doing commentary off a TV monitor.
"This is part of a mandate from the IOC to reduce the strain on the host city by bringing fewer people," said NBC Sports spokesman Brian Walker.
Full disclosure: New York would also like to reduce the strain on its population and ship these broadcasters to a remote site outside of Poughkeepsie.
1.3 billion: Inhabitants in China, and the estimate of high definition cameras in place to record everything.
"What this means for the viewer is, that no matter how they're watching -- even if it's not on a high-def set -- the end product will still be the highest quality it can possibly be because the source video is high definition," said Neal. "This is an enormous advance that will improve the quality of every bit of video that we send home to the United States.
"Even the smallest lipstick camera -- the camera that's embedded in the target at archery that gives you that point of view of the arrow coming directly at the target -- even that camera is in HD."
So was that a high-def camera in Alex Flanagan's lipstick case that the Chinese police officer just seized?
70: The amount of so-called "Up Close and Personal" vignettes that NBC's production staff has banked for distribution. Could we see 'em all on one channel instead?
"We learned our lessons after Sydney (in 2000), that we probably had too many features and it became more important for us to have our announcers tell more stories," said NBC Olympics chief Dick Ebersol. "(Of those features planned), they are little profiles ... almost uniformly two minutes or less. They're split between the American team and international athletes. It is important for you to have an understanding, for you to have a rooting interest, for our announcers to lay that all out."
Not that we expect ultra nationalistic rooting-interest coverage of every Phelps-like achievement, bordering on Beijingoism.
But if there's also a chance for NBC to show up the Chinese as they're trying to flex their muscle on their own fen shui soil, why wouldn't the U.S. rights-fees carrier keep hammering home the democracy-vs.- communism angle.
It's the American way.
Cowboy Up: HBO knocks it out
As promised, NFL Films and HBO didn't manufacture a Jessica Simpson moment during its first episode of "Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Dallas Cowboys," which debuted this week and replays several times before the next regular installment on Wednesdays at 10 p.m.
There was, however, a reference about 10 minutes in, when Rich Dalrymple, the team's director of public relations, addressed the entire team on the opening day of training camp in Oxnard with the quote -- "When you play in Dallas, if you can't handle the attention, then you won't be able to produce on Sunday" -- and attributed it to an "unnamed" player who "likes blonde-headed girls."
A 24-person NFL Films production crew, working out of two 30-foot mobile trailers, worked from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day and boiled nearly two weeks of footage into the first hour-long show. Twice each day, some 20 videotapes and five rolls of film are couriered back to the NFL Films studios in New Jersey to be edited, with Liev Schreiber's narration added, before the final cut is delivered to the HBO studios in New York for that night's airing.
According to Steve Sabol, the NFL Films chief and the show's executive producer, "ninety-five percent of our efforts will be focused on what happens on the field and the locker room."
And of that, it's very compelling stuff, from comparing Terrell Owens' work ethic (running along the shoreline in Ventura) to his marketing efforts (T.O. T-shirts), experiencing the jitters of a rookie like Todd Lowber trying to fill a spot that owner Jerry Jones created by releasing receiver Terry Glenn, or watching newcomer Adam (don't call me Pacman) Jones make it rain -- that is, dumping a bucket of cold water on first-round draft pick Felix Jones during his first day at the team hotel.
But it's that other five percent -- maybe seeing Simpson pop in to distract Tony Romo -- that will bring some voyeurism to the party at the Oxnard Residence Inn.
"She hasn't shown up," said HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg, who came out to Monday's practice, "and we're not out there as E! Television Network looking for her."
Episode two of the five-installment reality series that ends in early September will cover the team's first exhibition game Saturday against the Chargers (live on the NFL Network at 7 p.m.), including a five-hour Amtrak ride to San Diego. All aboard?
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3 photos, 2 boxes
Photo:
Five: Number of rings Germany basketball star Dirk Nowitzki has shaved into his head, which should guarantee that NBC's cameras find him during the Summer Olympics coverage in Beijing over the next two-plus weeks.
Thomas Kienzle/The Associated Press
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