WITH OLYMPICS, ANY TIME IS PRIME.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH Media

Even the Greeks would call it a Herculean task, this idea that NBC is attempting to bounce more than 1,200 hours of coverage from the Summer Olympics in Athens off a satellite and back down into your home theaters.

The Americans, they tend to call it overkill.

Or nirvana.

For all that programming spread across five networks, one Spanish- language channel and another high-definition feed, NBC Olympic chief Dick Ebersol doesn't expect the average grazer to consume even a quarter of all. Yet, already starting with a couple of soccer games on cable, going big with tonight's Opening Ceremony and continuing for 16 consecutive days and nights of at least one sport or another happening on some channel, there should be enough visual stimulation to confuse anyone as to whether it really matters if it's live or on tape.

``This really is the first of many experiments, and some things will work and some won't,'' Ebersol said before heading to Athens about whether all this coverage will mesh, considering there also will be Internet video streaming for the first time available on www.NBCOlympics.com. ``We'll check on how things work and adjust down the road.''

Down the road, meaning NBC and the Olympics are interlocked through 2012.

The road to Athens, for those of us who've used all our vacation time and can only afford to experience it through NBC's cameras supplemented by the unpredictable world feed, breaks down in a way one would expect for a network trying to cash in. NBC has seized all the glamour sports for its 8-to-midnight weeknight prime-time window (live in the East, taped delayed for us). That'll consume about 226 hours, or the extent of a ``Friends'' marathon.

Over on cable, some of NBC's new cousins from the merger with Universal will milk more hours. Keeping in mind L.A. is 10 hours behind Athens, MSNBC (133 hours), CNBC (111 hours), Bravo (122 hours) and USA Network (49 hours) are where all the live stuff will be available for those who can't wait and can't sleep.

On weekdays, MSNBC will handle overnight and early morning events like beach volleyball, soccer, softball, wrestling, rowing and weight lifting. CNBC takes a lot of the boxing events in the afternoons. CNBC starts tonight at 11 p.m. and goes 14 hours in a row with basketball, fencing and rowing until 1 p.m. Saturday, with MSNBC doing weekend boxing.

Bravo overlaps MSNBC in the mornings and then with CNBC in the afternoons with tennis, judo, equestrian, sailing and many of the other niche sports. USA Network, the so-called channel for USA sports, carries most of the basketball events live in the early mornings.

Add to that Telemundo (170 hours) taking a lot of boxing and soccer geared for the Latino fans, and HDTV doing its own 399 hours of eight-hour taped cycles, and there's your 1,210 hours - or just a tad more than 50 days crammed into two-plus weeks.

Think of this as a skewed evolution of the pay-per-view TripleCast experiment from 1992, providing as much live coverage for those who want to watch live events, leading up to the packaged programming on the networks, where all the real advertising dollars are invested.

But that's been the case in past Olympics with such a big time difference, so it shouldn't be anything to gripe about by this point. A daily schedule of what will be shown is available on NBCOlympics.com as well as the TV Guide Channel, and the Dish Network set aside a channel to show all NBC-affiliated networks on one screen to simplify things.

``The most important constituency of all, the viewers, have told us time and time again they want to watch the Olympics when they're available to watch,'' said Ebersol. ``When you're dealing with the price tag of doing an Olympics, you're always going to save the top-line events for prime time.''

At least he's finally come clean about that. For those who can't get enough statistics while downing sheep kidneys (a real Greek treat), here's a few more:

3,134: Number of NBC employees in Athens.

21,500: Number of media credentials issued for the Athens Games.

793: Number, in millions of dollars, NBC has spent in hopes of reaching its goal of $1 billion in return from advertisements.

1 to 5: The ratio of NBC broadcasters (103 for six channels) to actual U.S. Olympic athletes (538 in 29 sports). The good, the bad and those we're just indifferent about include:

--Bob Costas. Duh.

He points out his grandfather was from a Greek island off Turkey, and his grandmother was from Athens. But don't believe for a second he's related to Greek sprinter Costas Kenteris, who's supposed to light the Olympic flame tonight.

--Katie Couric, who'll be again involved in the Opening Ceremony coverage, trying to make Peru sound like a country that has a chance.

--Jim Lampley, working his 12th Olympics in one capacity or another, will anchor all of NBC's daytime and USA Network's coverage. Only ABC's Jim McKay has worked as many Olympic Games. In 2000, NBC employed McKay. This time, apparently, it wanted to give Lampley a chance to catch up.

--Fred Roggin, the longtime Channel 4 sportscaster and KMPC-AM (1540) sports-talk host, anchors the CNBC events. In addition, Roggin will also be asked to do reports with Chuck Henry during the Channel 4 news break-ins and call into The Ticket's morning show with Roger Lodge on Tuesdays and Thursdays. By Week 2, it'll only seem like it's been renamed The Roggin Games.

--Al Trautwig gets to do gymnastics, trampoline and the triathlon. Take that, John Tesh.

--Matt Vasgersian, the San Diego Padres play-by-play man and a prime candidate to someday take over for Vin Scully on Dodgers games, will do baseball and softball.

--Paul Sunderland, the Lakers play-by-play man, keeps with basketball, but only for the HD coverage, as well as gymnastics and diving. Over on the cable basketball coverage, it's Mike Breen, with Doug Collins on the men's games and Ann Meyers Drysdale on the women's games. No Bill Walton? The Greeks might not have a word for it, but the Latin phrase is ``moratorium.''

--Randy Rosenbloom, the longtime Valley high school broadcaster, has taken to rowing and flatwater kayaking, so all that experience on the L.A. River will come in handy.

331: Number of NFL preseason, regular-season and playoff games to be held between last Monday and Feb. 6, before Super Bowl XXXIX. At least that's what Charley Steiner reported during his ``Old School'' appearance this week on ESPN ``SportsCenter.'' And we trust Charley.

Not that it has anything to do with the Olympics, but it's something to chew on while wading through the first week of Michael Phelps hype.

CAPTION(S):

box

Box:

SOUND BYTES

By Tom Hoffarth