NBC announcers won’t travel to Beijing due to COVID-19 concerns

NBC-TV, the exclusive broadcaster of the Olympic Games in the United States, won’t be sending any announcers to Beijing due to COVID-19 concerns.

A spokesperson for the network said, “the announce teams for these Olympics, including figure skating, will be calling events from our Stamford, Conn. facility due to COVID concerns.”

The network will still have a large presence in Beijing during the Games, and said their coverage will “still be first-rate as usual.”

NBC-TV’s lead prime time studio host Mike Tirico will still travel to Beijing for the opening few days of the Winter Games, but will then travel back to Los Angeles to cover the Super Bowl for the network.

The unusual set up of announcing games while being physically thousands of miles away from them, is not new to NBC-TV as they had a similar arrangement during the Tokyo 2020 Games last summer.

“Our plans are evolving by the day as they are for most media companies covering the Olympics,” the network spokesperson said.

The Beijing Games begin in two weeks on February 4 and last until February 20. The Paralympics are March 4 -13.