CASPER7

SkyBOX: Chasing the Golden Peacock



by Evie Haskell

Beijing is hot, damp, drab ... and dazzling.

More on that later ... meanwhile I'm stalking the Golden Peacock. According to the latest reports (as of Sunday a.m. in China's capital city), NBC has handily topped $1 billion in ad revenues for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Some smart programming, a truly impressive multiplatform strategy and those eight gold medals for Guess Who in swimming recently added an extra $10 million in ads to the already billion-dollar pot of gold garnered by the net for the summer games.

Of course, NBC laid out something like $890 million in rights fees for these games. The network is spending many, many more millions on presenting the games (last night's field and track events were covered by more cameras, microphones and directors than we could even count) and in hosting them for phalanxes of guests (of which I am a grateful one). So when all is said and done, I'm betting that these Olympics come out at about a wash for the network.

A wash, that is, for the guys in green eyeshades. In terms of goodwill, great audience numbers and a virtual lock on a big, big piece of summer entertainment, the Peacock is definitely in the gold here. So what will that mean? A big bump in price when parent GE tries to fix its own balance sheet by selling the Peacock later this year or early next? Could be ... but that's definitely not all bad for the feathered ones.

But back to Beijing ... It's hot and damp because it's a virtual jungle in summertime. The drab part comes from both the gray skies and the hulks of Communist-era apartment buildings. (These guys make the old Chicago public housing projects look positively sunny.) And the dazzling is everywhere from the ultra-swank stores to the breath-taking new architecture. (The upper stories of the Pan Gu Plaza ... aka the six-star Dragon Hotel ... undulate in the form of a dragon's head while a four-story high-def screen beams Olympic sights from its side. Jaw dropping.)

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