As NBC this week begins offering live online coverage of every bit of Olympic competition for the first time in the U.S., it will also offer users a service meant to swing them to the best action.
NBC will formally announce Tuesday that its nbcolympics.com will offer an online-only Gold Zone Channel for the London Games meant to resemble the so-called Red Zone channels that flip viewers between NFL games when a team seems poised to score.
For the first time, NBC online will offer the entire live world Olympic TV feed, which literally covers every second of competition. At least it will offer that feed to the 100 million households -- out of the USA's total of 114 million households -- that get cable/satellite TV.
But users logging on will face a dizzying online Olympic buffet: The world feed includes about 3,500 hours of action, and at times there will be as many as 40 simultaneous events in 20 different sports.
The Gold Zone is meant to take viewers to marquee action, such as event finals or overtime action in games as well as headline events, such as swim races including Michael Phelps, that will also be mainstays of NBC's Olympic primetime TV.
Unlike NFL Red Zone coverage, NBC's Gold Zone won't have a TV-like host. Instead, an off-camera programmer will switch viewers between events while a Twitter user -- with the Twitter handle nbc_goldzone -- will tweet about what viewers are seeing and what's coming up. Those tweets will be visible in the online coverage.
Which makes sense. While Americans might be familiar with start times and game schedules for major U.S. events, suggests nbcolympics.com coordinating producer Dave Gabel, "we don't think the average U.S. sports fan has a good grasp of the schedule each day at the Olympics. ... This is a lean-back approach for users to say, 'I'll watch what NBC brings me.' ''
Reid Cherner has been with USA TODAY since 1982 and written Game On! since March 2008.
He has covered everything from high schools to horse racing to the college and the pros. The only thing he likes more than his own voice is the sound of readers telling him when he's right and wrong.
Michael Hiestand has covered sports media and marketing for USA TODAY, tackling the sports biz ranging from what's behind mega-events such as the Olympics and Super Bowl to the sometimes-hidden numbers behind the sports world's bottom line.