NBC Will Debut First Ever Live Morning Broadcast of Opening Ceremony with Tokyo Olympics
NBC Olympics will provide unprecedented coverage of the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on Friday, July 23, including the network’s first-ever live morning broadcast of an Opening Ceremony.
The Tokyo Opening Ceremony will also be broadcast live on NBC across all time zones starting at 6:55 a.m. ET/3:55 a.m. PT, including participation by TODAY anchors who viewers welcome into their homes each morning.
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This marks the first time NBC Olympics will broadcast an Opening Ceremony live in the morning, followed by a special edition of TODAY with reaction and athlete interviews and then NBC’s first-ever Olympic Daytime show on the opening Friday of the Games. The NBC primetime coverage of the Tokyo Opening Ceremony will be replayed overnight, allowing viewers another opportunity to experience this historic moment and creating a near Ceremony takeover of NBC.
The highly anticipated Tokyo Opening Ceremony will be the first major global gathering since the worldwide pandemic began last year. The NBC primetime broadcast will feature special coverage of Team USA, along with the performances, pageantry, and Parade of Nations, the heart of any Opening Ceremony, which will be especially meaningful this year.
Speaking of the games, NBC Sports Group Chairman Pete Bevacqua said, “Following the unprecedented challenges presented by the global pandemic, the world will come together in Tokyo for what could be the most meaningful and anticipated Opening Ceremony ever. Given the magnitude of this event, we want to provide viewers with as many ways to connect to it as possible, live or in primetime.”
NBC makes no mention of Peacock’s role during the Opening Ceremony, but it is likely that it will be streamed on there as well. They said full digital and streaming plans, will be announced at a later date. In total, NBC plans for more than 7,000 hours of coverage for the Tokyo Olympics.`
The service was originally supposed to launch in conjunction with the 2020 Olympics. Last summer, the streamer added a pop-up channel titled “Road to Tokyo,” which is dedicated to round-the-clock streaming of Olympic and Paralympic classic moments, documentaries and studio programming.