Follow our Olympics coverage from the Paris Games. When asked how he was approaching the most unique opening ceremony in the history of the Olympic Games — an audacious plan featuring more than 10,000 Olympic athletes traveling down the River Seine on team boats as part of a 3.7-mile route crossing the heart of Paris, passing through some of its most famed bridges and landmarks, and concluding in front of the Trocadéro — NBC Olympics prime-time producer Rob Hyland sounded like a man about to embark on a whitewater rafting adventure.
Advertisement “You hope to hang on for dear life,” Hyland said, laughing. “I’m looking at schematics on my desk right now of this 3.7-mile river route.
The degree of difficulty with any opening ceremony is through the roof, but I don’t know where to put this one. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of. It’s exciting, but there are a lot of unknowns.
“The creative directors that have put this show together are really banking on a beautiful night in Paris, and they want to use sort of golden hour to present the city and their country. A lot of cameras would be compromised if there is significant weather, things like live drones and aerials. There are quite a few variables, and it’s never going to be rehearsed in its entirety.
So other than that, it’s going to be perfect.” NBC and Peacock’s coverage of the Paris opening ceremony on Friday has the potential to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen from an Olympics . The first-ever waterborne opening ceremony will feature 85 or so boats carrying athletes from more than 200 countries traveling past spectators seated on the banks of the famed Paris body of water.
Live coverage begins at noon ET on NBC with the ceremony believed to be starting at 1:30 p.m. ET.
It is expected to last over three hours. Telemundo will provide Spanish-language coverage beginning at 1 p.m.
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Sign up Each boat will take about 45 minutes from the time it leaves the starting point at Pont d’Austerlitz to the time it arrives at the Trocadéro. There are expected to be 300,000 spectators lining the course, bridges filled with dancers and musicians, and the hope from organizers (and no doubt NBC) is that the spectacular ceremony will provide the jet fuel to get people excited about the Games. The prime-time re-airing of the opening ceremony will begin at 7:30 p.
m. ET on NBC and Peacock. Advertisement Hyland said NBC will focus heavily on Team USA during the opening ceremony broadcast, and as part of that focus, host and reporter Maria Taylor (along with two camera operators and one researcher) will be reporting live from Team USA’s boat as it makes its way down the Seine.
Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb of the “Today” show, and Snoop Dogg will be located at the Pont de la Concorde (about halfway down the river) as part of the coverage. Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of NBC Olympics production, called the Paris opening ceremony the most complicated live event ever attempted on television. The host broadcaster, Olympic Broadcast Services, has more than 100 cameras ready to create the world feed to cover the entertainment and the athlete boats.
There are also 200 mobile phone cameras feeding live shots of every single delegation. Solomon said NBC will have 45 of its own cameras to follow the U.S.
team from the village to their boat as well as cameras on bridges and throughout the ceremony. Mike Tirico, Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning will host the opening ceremony from the Trocadéro, which sits across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. (Paris 2024 has constructed a temporary stadium at the Trocadéro in the shape of a horseshoe.
) The additions of Clarkson and Manning are significant given it represents NBCU going heavy on celebrity as part of its Paris Games coverage . Solomon said the choices of Clarkson and Manning were intentional given the event will intersperse musical performances with the parade of nations on boats. “When we reflected on what we’re going to be covering, we thought about why don’t we bring in a wider perspective of voices,” said Solomon, the first woman to executive produce the Olympics for NBC.
“Sports, entertainment, news, you’re going to get all of that. There’s nobody better than Mike Tirico giving perspective. I watched Kelly Clarkson host NFL Honors a couple of years ago, and I was blown away by her ability to communicate outside her sort of lane.
Same thing with Peyton. Anything he touches his gold. “So you’ve got Kelly who can speak to the entertainment piece and the musical performances.
You’ve got Peyton who loves the Olympics and has a curiosity about athletes and stories. Plus you have Savannah and Hoda who can handle anything and have hosted three or four opening ceremonies between them. I think this is much more a 360 view of the ceremony, and I felt like it was time to reimagine and bring in a wider array of voices.
” Advertisement The live opening ceremony broadcast is just one element for NBC Universal. They have to quickly go from the live production to producing and presenting a curated prime-time version of the opening ceremony just hours after it airs live. NBC will have a staff of 40 senior production staffers assigned to take the live broadcast and add graphics, re-voicing, teases, and other storytelling elements for the prime-time re-air.
Hyland predicted the prime-time show, which comes on at 7:30 p.m. ET, will be about 75 to 80 percent similar to the live broadcast from the afternoon.
He said there might be more focus on Team USA in the prime-time taped show. There are more commercials in the prime-time hour than the live broadcast, and the prime-time show will obviously show less of the full ceremony than the live broadcast. “We’re going to cover it live in the daytime and then fuse it with deeper storytelling in prime time,” Solomon said.
Outside of the artistic ambition, the Paris opening ceremony is significant for NBCU’s viewership aspirations. It’s the first opening ceremony with some distance from the global pandemic, and NBC’s hope is to create viewership momentum heading into the competition. That has not been the case with the last two Olympics.
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony across multiple platforms had a total audience delivery of 16 million viewers, the lowest opening ceremony viewership in NBC’s history. NBC’s broadcast of the Tokyo Games opening ceremony in July 2021 drew 17 million viewers, which at the time was the smallest U.S.
television audience for the event in three decades. Just six years ago, NBC averaged 28.3 million viewers (including streaming) for the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
For NBC, there is a lot riding on the boat parade. GO DEEPER 2024 Paris Olympics viewer's guide: NBC's plans, Snoop Dogg, and the big ratings question (Top photo of a Tuesday rehearsal of the opening ceremony: Mustafa Ciftci / Anadolu via Getty Images).
