Through its use of the Syncom 3 satellite, a daily highlights package could be seen a few hours after the events took place; otherwise, videotape canisters were flown across the Pacific Ocean and were broadcast to American viewers the following day.

[19] Anchored[20] by Curt Gowdy,[21] much of the coverage actually was broadcast live since alpine skiing and long track speed skating were held in the morning, which corresponded to prime time on the East Coast of the United States.

Among the sportscasters that NBC utilized in 1992 were Marv Albert,[73] Mike Fratello,[74] and Quinn Buckner[75] on basketball, Bob Trumpy,[71] Al Bernstein,[76] and Beasley Reece[77] on boxing, Tom Hammond,[78] Charlie Jones[79] Michele Mitchell, and Wendy Lian Williams[80] on diving, Terry Leibel[81] and Melanie Smith Taylor[82] on equestrian, Jim Donovan[83] and Seamus Malin on soccer, John Tesh,[84] Greg Lewis,[85] Tim Daggett,[86] Elfi Schlegel,[87] Wendy Hilliard, Peter Vidmar, and Julianne McNamara[88] on gymnastics, Joel Meyers[89] on rowing, Charlie Jones,[90] Mary Wayte,[71] and Mike O'Brien on swimming, Al Trautwig[91] and Tracie Ruiz-Conforto[71] on synchronized swimming, Bud Collins,[92] Tracy Austin,[93] Chris Evert,[94] and Vitas Gerulaitis[95] on tennis, Tom Hammond, Craig Masback,[96] and Dwight Stones[97] on track and field, Chris Marlowe[98] and Paul Sunderland[99] on volleyball, Charlie Jones and Jim Kruse[100] on water polo, and Russ Hellickson[101] and Jeff Blatnick[102] on wrestling.

For the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, NBC used as commentators Marv Albert,[105] Matt Goukas,[106] Magic Johnson,[107] and Jim Gray on men's basketball, Mike Breen[108] and Cheryl Miller[109] on women's basketball, Bob Papa,[110] Al Bernstein,[111] Beasley Reese[112] on boxing, Charlie Jones[113] and Bill Endicott on canoeing, Al Trautwig,[114] Phil Liggett,[115] and Paul Sherwen[116] on cycling, Dan Hicks and Cynthia Potter[117] on diving, Jim Simpson[118] and Melanie Smith Taylor on equestrian, Jim Donovan and Seamus Malin on soccer, John Tesh,[119] Tim Daggett,[120] Elfi Schlegel,[121] and Beth Ruyak[122] on gymnastics, Charlie Jones[123] and Bill Endicott[124] on rowing, Dan Hicks,[125] Summer Sanders,[126] Rowdy Gaines,[127] and Jim Gray[128] on swimming, Don Criqui[129] and Tracie Ruiz-Conforto on synchronized swimming, Bud Collins[130] and Mary Carillo[131] on tennis, Tom Hammond, Dwight Stones,[132] Craig Masback,[133] and Carol Lewis[134] on track and field, Chris Marlowe,[135] Randy Rosenbloom[136] (beach), Paul Sunderland,[99] Kirk Kilgour[137] (beach), and Bill Walton[138] on volleyball, Don Criqui and Jim Kruse[139] on water polo, Bob Trumpy[140] and Phil Simms[141] on weightlifting, and Russ Hellickson and Jeff Blatnick[142] on wrestling.

[146] At the 2008 Summer Olympics, events were streamed live for the first time on the Internet through the NBCOlympics.com website, and NBC began to employ part-time high-definition channels dedicated to the basketball and soccer competitions.

[7] The 2010 Games added then-digital multicast network Universal Sports, which carried analysis programs about events, while Oxygen and Bravo were completely excluded to maintain their schedules.

For the 2016 Summer Olympics, NBC began to offer 4K content on a delayed basis through participating service providers (particularly DirecTV, Dish Network, and Xfinity), downconverted from 8K footage filmed by NHK and OBS, with HDR and Dolby Atmos support.

[174] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic (which had already prompted the Games to be postponed by one year to 2021) and biosecurity protocols, NBC sent a significantly smaller number of employees to Tokyo than it usually did for previous Summer Olympics.

[249] Similarly, United Kingdom's state broadcaster BBC was criticized during the 2020 Summer Olympics for "parochial nationalism" and "[remaigining] the greatest sporting pageant on Earth as Team GB vs Everyone Else.

[252][253] The massive tape delay led to heavy criticism, as some events aired some 16 hours after they were completed, which gave would-be viewers more than enough time to learn the results themselves from competing outlets, including NBC's morning show Today.

[8][256][257] For example, during the 2012 Summer Olympics, NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus stated that the reason why they cut from their primetime coverage of Russia's Ksenia Afanasyeva's fall during the women's gymnastics artistic team all-around was "in the interest of time".

[256] And during the 2014 Winter Olympics, NBC continued to promote for its primetime coverage Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko at the men's singles event even though he withdrew hours earlier due to injury.

[261] In an interview with Slate, former NBC personality Dwight Stones stated that he had left the network due to a history of conflicts with producers over the direction of its track and field coverage.

"[262][263] Reeves Wiedman of The New Yorker argued that NBC's style of coverage focuses too much on the athletes as characters, rather than on the technical aspects of sports that are not typically prominent on U.S. television outside of the Olympics.

[264] Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times described NBC's coverage this way: NBC's approach would be like waiting until 8 p.m. to broadcast a [Seattle] Seahawks game against the New England Patriots that happened at 1 p.m. Then, showing only select snippets from each quarter, interspersed with soft features of [Seahawks quarterback] Russell Wilson and [his wife] Ciara, and [Patriots quarterback] Tom Brady and [his wife] Gisele walking hand-in-hand down a beach with Mozart playing in the background.

[285][286] NBC was criticized over the way its tape delayed primetime coverage handled the news of Russian star figure skater Evgeni Plushenko's withdrawal from competition due to injury.

[289] On March 28, 2017, NBC announced that it would air live coverage in primetime for the 2018 Winter Olympics across all time zones, citing the "communal experience" and the ubiquity of social media as justification for this change.

They admitted to not knowing who World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee was, mistakenly claimed that the actual Queen of the United Kingdom had parachuted into the stadium with James Bond (as opposed to a body double), and described Madagascar as "a country associated with a few animated movies".

[313] Due in part to lingering criticism from social media outlets like Twitter, NBC made a last-minute decision to reverse course and stream the closing ceremony live on NBCOlympics.com.

[319] However, that meant that NBC only scheduled a two-hour window for their tape delayed coverage of the ceremony, between a 90-minute documentary on Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan that aired from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. Eastern, and the Growing Up Fisher preview.

[329] Similarly to Sochi, the closing ceremony's lead-out—a preview of the eleventh season of The Voice, aired at 10:30 p.m.[330] At least 38% of the ceremony was cut from the NBC primetime broadcast, including portions of the entry of athletes (although Deadspin noted that this portion took "a really, really long time"), a three-minute long montage of highlights from the Games, the medal presentation for the Men's marathon (despite American athlete Galen Rupp having won a bronze medal in the event), the inauguration of new IOC members, and a speech by organizing committee president Carlos Nuzman, who was later convicted for corruption and fraud, being sentenced for more than 30 years in prison.

[333][334] During the parade of nations, NBC commentator Joshua Cooper Ramo described Japan as "a country which occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945", but "a cultural and technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation."

[342] The NBC telecast of the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics in Paris featured hosts such as Snoop Dogg, Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson, whose eponymous talk show is syndicated by the network's distribution arm.

Olympics fans watching at home aren't tuning in to hear a talk-show host (Clarkson) and football analyst (Manning) discuss things outside of their spheres of influence.

[344] Although the ceremony itself was noted for containing a number of segments that have received criticism from conservative and right-wing movements and governments worldwide, NBC largely avoided involvement in the surrounding controversy.

Craven praised NBC's decision to devote a larger amount of airtime to future Paralympics, sharing his hope that U.S. audiences would be "as captivated and emotionally enthralled as the billions around the world who tuned in to London 2012 last summer.

[357][358][359] On February 16, 2014, reporter and former women's alpine skiing silver medalist Christin Cooper received criticism for her interview with American Bode Miller after his bronze medal win in the men's super G event.

He cited limited coverage as part of NBC's televised broadcasts, as well as the network's refusal to invite him back, after having called out questionable officiating during a controversial bout between Magomed Abdulhamidov and Satoshi Shimizu in 2012.

There was no reference to who the "man" was, although some on social media angrily speculated that Hicks was alluding to Katinka Hosszú's then-husband, Shane Tusup (who was also the coach of the Hungarian Swimming Team).

"[378][379] In the lead up to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, American right-wing politicians and media personalities heavily criticized NBC for continuing to promote their broadcast of the Games despite both the diplomatic boycott announced by President Biden and the controversy surrounding what they described as a genocide of Uyghurs perpetrated by China.