OLYMPIC FRUSTRATION NBC PUTS DRAMA ON HOLD.

Byline: Tom Hoffarth Staff Writer

Please accept our apologies. We're about to spoil your Olympics.

Try existing each day blindfolded with earplugs in an isolation tank away from the obnoxious office know-it-all who wants to blab about what he just heard.

Otherwise, it will be pretty darn impossible not to find out the results at the Summer Games from Sydney, Australia, long before NBC gets around to airing them each night.

With information available from newspapers, radio and the Internet - not to mention all of NBC's TV competitors - breaking down the 18-hour time barrier between here and Down Under won't be a problem.

But it will be a pain for TV viewers who don't want to know.

Having paid $705 million in rights fees to the International Olympic Committee, NBC has made a calculated business decision to protect its investment and commitment to those who've kicked in more than $900 million in advertising, which insures a profit for the network.

And that strategy: Package all the major events of the day into a five- hour, prime-time presentation each night, in addition to a combined 11 hours a day coverage on cable outlets MSNBC and CNBC.

That adds up to more than 440 hours of television through Oct. 1.

All of it is on tape, some of it as much as 24 hours old.

Not a second of it, not even on cable, will be live.

On CBS, they'll be showing the ``Survivor'' series again.

On ABC, they'll be showing replays of ``Who Wants to be a Millionaire.''

But even before the Olympic flame has been lit, there's been a fire of controversy about NBC's taped tactics for the Games.

``It's all about serving the public,'' said Dick Ebersol, NBC's chief of sports and executive producer of the network's telecast, who will ultimately be the one who picks out what you watch each day.

``We aren't hiding the fact that it will all be on tape. And this isn't a new problem. We did this in Seoul (in 1988) and in Barcelona (in 1992) with other offshore Olympics.

``We won't even be plausibly (partially) live, as we were in Atlanta (in 1996). The simple thing is to keep it all on tape so no one is confused.''

Sports columnists from around the country have attacked NBC's approach more than any one else. Female columnists, such as Ann Killion of the San Jose Mercury News, have even taken up the cause, claiming NBC's coverage panders to women.

``All I know is that I'm like most women,'' Killion wrote recently. ``I'm going to know who won an important event by the time the NBC evening telecast rolls around. And instead of parking in front of the TV to watch an event whose outcome I already know, I will probably use that time to do laundry.''

Gymnastics, swimming, diving and track and field - which viewers traditionally gravitate toward every four years at the Games - make up 65 percent of NBC's 84 1/2 hours of prime-time telecast, Ebersol says. But almost every one of those events, particularly the finals, will take place between midnight and 4 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time over the next two weeks.

``One of the biggest complaints toward CBS from Nagano (in 1988) was they ping-ponged back and forth from live to tape,'' said David Neal, NBC's coordinating producer. ``Viewers are telling us to do one thing or another.''

So they decided to go with tape.

When NBC's coverage of the Opening Ceremonies begins at 7:30 tonight, it'll be 1:30 p.m. Saturday in Sydney. And by that time, the gold medal in the women's triathlon will already have been handed out, the day's competition in women's beach volleyball will be completed, and key heats in men's and women's swimming will have taken place.

In Sunday's newspaper, the results of Tommy Lasorda's U.S. baseball team opening up against Japan will be there. They will have taken place at 12:30 p.m. Sunday Australian time (6:30 p.m. PDT). But NBC won't air it here until about 1:30 p.m. PDT Sunday afternoon - about a 19-hour delay.

Monday, when Studio City's Lenny Krayzelburg begins his quest for three goal medals by swimming in the 100-meter backstroke final, the event will take place between 7 and 9 p.m. in Australia (1 and 3 a.m. PDT). When NBC shows it between 7 p.m. and midnight PDT Monday night, it'll be at least 17 hours old.

On Sept. 23, when former Thousand Oaks High star Marion Jones runs the 100-meter women's final, followed by Maurice Green in the 100-meter men's final, it'll happen sometime after 8 p.m. in Australia (after 2 a.m. PDT). NBC's delay will be about 20 hours.

``The alternative is to show it live at 3 a.m. and everyone can set their alarm clocks and get up and watch and be grumpy and exhausted by lunchtime,'' said Ebersol. ``We're not in this business to get a 1 or 2 rating.''

There are other alternatives to watching the Olympics live, but none seem to be a threat to NBC's hold on prime-time exposure.

For those with the giant satellite dish (or living in northern border cities such as Seattle, Detroit and Buffalo, N.Y.), Canada's national network, CBC, will do nine hours live each night. The focus, of course, will be mostly on its country's athletes and teams and it won't have NBC's vast resources to carry it beyond the standard worldwide Olympic-generated TV feed.

``The Canadians pay next to nothing for the rights ($58 million) so they can afford to put it on in the middle of the night when no one's watching,'' Ebersol said. ``They can have 500,000 viewers at midnight. If we did that, we'd all be fired. Only 8 percent of the population watch TV at that time, and I'll bet half of them are asleep and left their sets turned on.''

All-sports networks such as Fox, ESPN and CNN will also have results, but again, no video highlights until after NBC has shown them.

That is the main reason why live coverage in the middle of the night won't be done on NBC. If it did show an event live, it would allow other media outlets to show the tape sooner, thus scooping NBC before it had a chance to repeat it in prime time.

``We have to sit on it to protect it for our audience,'' said Ebersol.

The official NBC Internet site, nbcolympics.com, will have updated results, but no video highlights until after they've been shown on television.

America Online and Yahoo will be among those Web sites offering up- to-the-minute results, but even those services are caught in a bind. A recent AOL survey showed 73 percent of its users wanted the information available as it happened, but 75 percent of them didn't want to see the information because it would spoil their TV viewing. The IOC, which has banned Internet reporters from holding media credentials, also will police Web sites to prevent anyone from showing live videostream of the events as they happen.

``I don't think the Internet will make that much of a difference (affecting the TV ratings),'' said Ebersol. ``The people driven to get results are the purists, and they are a small number. The Olympics are a much more visual experience than a results experience.''

Ebersol's spin, then, is to call this the family-friendly back-to-the-future Games. They estimate it will draw a rating of about 18.5, which is better than tape-delayed games from Seoul or Barcelona but not as good as the 21.5 from Atlanta.

``This is the only true family audience left. It's a rare treat to feed the whole family. Usually dad's in one room watching sports, mom is in the other room watching a drama on another network, the the kids are watching MTV or on the Internet.

``The time when as many people are in front of their TVs is prime time, and what's what we've sold to advertisers. People watch the Olympics for different reasons than they watch other sports. The human drama, the journey, is as equally compelling as the results. It's more engaging and accessible to people who don't normally watch sports.

``Think of it Saturday night: You might know the results of the swimming, but to watch it, it'll be 17,000 people at the indoor swim arena, the United States-Australian rivalry. It'll be theater art, not so much performance. It's more fodder for the human eyeball.''

That is, if you take that blindfold off in time.

CAPTION(S):

photo, 2 boxes

Photo:

(color) Australian golfer Greg Norman is surrounded by onlookers and security as he runs with the Olympic torch over the Sydney Harbor Bridge before sunrise today.

Charles Krupa/Associated Press!

Box: (1) TV COVERAGE

(2) PRIME-TIME RATINGS