Why televising the Olympics is more complicated than it seems

These questions originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. They were answered on May 10th, 2016.

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Q: How do TV networks decide what Olympic sports to show live, given that there are so many parallel events?

A: The good news is that we now have so many platforms, including digital, that virtually every second of Olympic competition is available live somewhere. In the past, this was a more difficult process. As recently as the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, for example, NBC broadcast a grand total of…