For its coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, NBC believes that less is more.
Not less coverage. No, the network plans a total of 161 hours from Barcelona.But NBC Sports executives promise that viewers will be seeing and hearing less of the network's sportscasters and fewer prepackaged feature segments.
"We've been guilty sometimes of over-talking, over-setting up, perhaps filling . . . when it comes to overproducing the Olympic Games," said Terry O'Neil, executive producer of NBC Sports. "And I think what you are going to find in this coverage this time from NBC is that we mean to play ball when we come on the air."
And he promises that viewers will see that approach of getting right to the action from the moment the Games begin.
"The opening ceremonies on Saturday night will literally begin without a tease, without a title animation, without an on-camera (appearance by a sportscaster)," O'Neil said. "The first thing you'll see from Barcelona will be a 25-second countdown by the public address announcer in the stadium, counting the audience to the start of the ceremony. And it will begin 25 seconds after we take the air."
NBC is also planning an unprecedented production effort.
"We're going to give you these Games in the video language of the '90s," O'Neil enthused. "We'll give them to you with a tracking camera under the water for swimming that will actually pan, zoom tilt and track up and down the pool with the swimmer. So you'll see the action of that sport the way you've never seen it, down below the surface of the water.
"We've got cameras everywhere. We've got audio everywhere you can possibly imagine."
NBC will have 285 cameras at 16 main venues, including micro-cams - miniature cameras - giving the sports a look they've never had before.
"Just to give you an example, boxing, which normally would have five or six cameras, has 10 cameras. Track and field, 39. And gymnastics has 32 cameras, which is Super Bowl level," O'Neil said.
The network will also have dozens of reporters on hand, some of whom are former Olympic champions themselves. But those you'll be seeing most of are the anchors.
Dick Enberg and Katie Couric will host the morning broadcasts, while Bob Costas will go solo in NBC's Barcelona studio in prime time.
NBC is involved not only with its broadcast network presentation of the Games but in the pay-per-view Olympics Triplecast as well. (Please see accompanying story.)
Triplecast consists of three separate channels, each with different sports and each broadcasting 24 hours a day throughout the Games - 12 hours live, which are then repeated.
However, like previous network coverage of the Olympics, NBC's will be an extended highlights show. The only event scheduled to air live is the men's basketball gold medal game.
"We made the decision more than three years ago that these Olympics, with the time difference, could be best shown in the United States as a storyteller's Olympics," said Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports. "And to be going in and out of live and tape seemed to be something that would confuse everybody and would not allow us to really have a plan - would not allow us to really take advantage of this time to craft the Olympics in the best way we think we can on the broadcast side.
"We're involved in creating a total mosaic of what's going on in Barcelona every day."
Of immediate interest to local basketball fans is what effect that "mosaic" approach will have on coverage of the American squad - the "Dream Team." And the fact is that while highlights of those games are guaranteed, fans are assured of seeing just three weekend contests in their entirety.
"But as for the other five games, that decision won't be made until late, late at night after everything is concluded here," Ebersol.
Terry Ewert, the executive producer of the Triplecast, was blunter. "The only way to see all eight of their games as they continue and, hopefully, win the gold medal is on the Triplecast," he said.
The NBC execs emphasized that they are not reserving basketball or other events exclusively for the Triplecast but that pay-cable will be the only place to see events in their entirety.
"There is no embargo on the broadcast side," O'Neil said. "We on the broadcast side are free to use everything that happens here in Barcelona for the 16 days of the Games - and will.
"We'll evaluate each night the attractiveness to the American general viewer - not the specialist viewer, but the general viewer who watches the broadcast side. And make decisions accordingly."
"Trust us, and we'll show you a mosaic," Ebersol said.