NBC took a $900 million gamble by purchasing the exclusive television and online rights to cover the Beijing Games and with five days of competition still remaining it seems that the bet is paying off.

General Electric, NBC's parent company, said it expects to surpass $1 billion in advertising revenue for this year's broadcast. NBC is also likely to surpass the record $133.5 million in profits it netted from the 2004 games. NBC took home a net profit of $70.6 million for the Winter Games in Torino in 2006.

The one-two combination for both online and TV coverage is as precarious as the women's balance beam event in gymnastics, though maybe not quite as painful. The need to keep TV prime time audiences high and yet cater to the immediacy of the web viewer has been tricky, but it seems to be paying off. The coverage on the bigger screen has been superb, especailly as for the first time, every event is being broadcast in HD. Ratings are running at there highest ever for a non-US hosted Olympics, and are just behind the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.

I'll admit a certain amount of personal frustration with the 'Live' prime-time, tape-delay factor, especially out here on the fringes of civilization on California's west coast, but this is understandable, given the need to recapture the hefty costs and allowing for the 15 hour time difference, besides the other affiliated networks, USA, Universal HD and ESPN, have picked up the slack and have no doubt drawn upon the many bleary-eyed audiences, myself included, trying to keep abreast of the beach volleyball and synchronized diving.

The online results have been equally impressive. As of August 14 last week, during the height of the Michael Phelps' Pool-Phever Phrenzy, nearly 25 million people have visited NBCOlympics.com, viewing 456 million pages and watching close to 22 million video clips, recording more page views than for the entire 2004 Games in Athens.

The website carries results, highlights, analysis, statistics and replays of events—all of which is free though users must download Microsoft Corp's Silverlight software and enter some basic information like a zip code. The general feedback for the sit has been positive though there have been complaints that the site is a little difficult to navigate and this could be by design to help boost the page-visit time. The online video still doesn't come even close to the HD TV screen but it is handy to catchup with the events especially while at work. It's part of my job, well that's my excuse!

Web traffic to NBCOlympics.com is up during the day and offers a total of 2,200 hours of live coverage which is significantly more than the 2 hours of live coverage from the last Winter Games in Torino.

NBC took a risk with competing for TV and Web eyeballs, but it seems to have paid off. No doubt Michael Phelps' incredible and unprecedented 8 gold medals in the  'Cube' helped contribute to a 12 percent boost in viewers in the US, but it seems that audience figures around the world are up to around the levels of the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.

The impressive results could mean that broadcasters and advertisers in the future will embrace both television and live online media rather than seeing them as exclusive competitors for advertising revenues. With the advances in broadband technology being touted, no doubt by the time the Games roll around to London in 2012 we should be in for a real treat. Let's hope so.