Free Republic

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC Universal is ramping up for next month's 17-day coverage of the Torino Olympics, using many of its assets to provide a record amount of TV time for a Winter Olympics. The broadcaster said Tuesday that it will schedule 416 hours of coverage across NBC, USA, MSNBC and CNBC as well as two high-definition channels, NBC HD and Universal HD. That bests the previous Winter Olympics record, 375 hours from Salt Lake City in February 2002. NBC itself will have more than 182 hours. The cable channels are scheduled to have 233 hours of coverage,...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Five seconds might not amount to a lot of time considering that ABC's Academy Awards broadcast is expected to run 3-1/2 hours on Feb. 29. But the network's insistence on using a five-second tape delay has angered Frank Pierson, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In a letter to the Academy's membership, he warned that a delay, which has not been used before on an Oscar show, could be the first step on a slippery slope that "introduces a form of censorship." Although the Academy's board of governors refused last week...