Five years ago, the Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts faced his first challenge as the new majority owner of NBC. On the eve of the bidding for the rights to show the 2014 and 2016 Olympic Games, he lost his top sports executive, Dick Ebersol, when talks for a new contract for Mr. Ebersol failed.
It was the equivalent of the Yankees losing Derek Jeter just before the World Series. Mr. Ebersol had made the Olympics central to the NBC brand for two decades, and he was hands-down the American television executive best connected to Olympic officials in Switzerland.