NBC Wanted to Get Games, but It Turned Out to Be Triple Jeopardy

NBC paid $451 million for rights to the Barcelona Olympic Games, outbidding CBS by a whopping $50 million. Industry experts estimate NBC losses at $100 million or more.

NBC hoped that its TripleCast partnership with Cablevision would defray losses. Cablevision was hoping for three million viewers paying $125 each, but estimates of the actual number of subscribers range as low as 165,000.

“They must have been hit by sunspots when they dreamed that up,” former CBS executive Jerry Dominus, now a vice president at the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, told USA Today. “There aren’t enough sports bars in America to make that work.”

Joked Jay Leno early in the Olympics: “They just signed up another subscriber. They’re changing the name to the QuadCast.”

Perspectives: New Tampa Bay Buccaneer Coach Sam Wyche says of his final season in Cincinnati: “I still maintain we had a good year. The players didn’t quit. The coaches didn’t lose faith in themselves. People in the business will understand what I’m saying.”

People outside the business will note the Bengals were 3-13.

Trivia time: Who was the last manager of the Washington Senators?

Long memory: If the proposed sale of the San Francisco Giants to a group in St. Petersburg, Fla., is shaking people up, Murray Chass of the New York Times says not to feel sorry for:

“--Peter O’Malley. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ owner can’t complain about the Giants’ abandoning the West Coast and their ageless rivalry because his father abandoned Brooklyn and induced Horace Stoneham to move West with him. Of course, if O’Malley wants to travel in tandem with the Giants once more, Brooklyn fans would allow the Dodgers back into the borough.

“--Any owners including O’Malley who might want Commissioner Fay Vincent to block the move. The owners have made Vincent’s life miserable by sniping at him at every turn (some even resent his attending baseball games). The (Chicago) Cubs are suing him in Federal Court and blocking his plan for National League realignment. Why should he do their dirty work for them so that they don’t emerge as the bad guys in the effort to keep the Giants in San Francisco?”

Long memory II: The NBA’s Olympic Dream Team has awakened the publicity-starved NHL to the possibility of sending players to Lillehammer, Norway, for the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Wayne Gretzky floated the idea of such a team before the Albertville Games last winter but couldn’t get it off the ground.

Since then, the NHL’s new interim president, Gil Stein, has joined the Olympic bandwagon, along with King owner Bruce McNall, in a strong effort to allow the league’s players to compete in the Games.

However, not everyone is convinced.

“I am not enchanted with (the idea),” said Lou Nanne, general manager of the Minnesota North Stars, a U.S. Olympian in 1968. “We have the Canada Cup now for international competition. And we won’t have an outlet for our younger players . . . a goal for kids. You can’t get greater notoriety for hockey than what the ’80 (U.S.) team did.”

Redecorating: The late Leo Durocher liked to tell of the time Chicago Cub slugger Billy Williams hit a pitch over the right-field stands at Wrigley Field. The home run, which was measured at 505 feet, went through a window and broke a lamp in an apartment across Sheffield Avenue. Upset by her loss, the tenant complained to the Cubs, who happily replaced both. Said Durocher: “Don’t you know we kept hitting balls through her window, so she rotated her lamps until they all were broken and they’d bought her a whole new set.”

Trivia answer: Ted Williams. He went 63-96 in 1971. In 1972, the team became the Texas Rangers and went 54-100 under Williams.

Quotebook: Embattled Fay Vincent, on speculation that he won’t seek another term as baseball commissioner: “I haven’t said that, but do you think somebody in my position would do this again?”