There were two very interesting corollaries to the announcement Tuesday that NBC and its family of networks (USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Versus, et al.) were televising all Olympic Games for the next ten years in the US. NBC's new sports chief Mark Lazarus, who came over from Turner Sports, announced that the company intended to show every event from the four Olympics (2014-2020) live on either broadcast or the internet.  It is a major change from the antiquated NBC policy pioneered by former leader Dick Ebersol. The approach involved showing the Games on tape-delay during primetime, littered with "up close and personal" segments. This is a big win for Olympic fans!    

It was also noted how uncompetitive NBC's rivals, ESPN and Fox, were when it came to the financial bidding. NBC came up with a four games bid of $4.38 billion to easily outdo the other networks. Rupert Murdoch owned Fox bid $3.4 billion for the four Games, while Disney owned ESPN was willing to commit only $1.7 billion for 2014 and 2016, making the decision a no-brainer for the International Olympic Committee.