McKay Joining 2002 Olympic Coverage

Jim McKay is returning to where many believe he belongs. The Olympics. <br><br>The voice perhaps most associated with television coverage of the Summer and Winter Games will help narrate the 2002 Salt

Thursday, January 11th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Jim McKay is returning to where many believe he belongs. The Olympics.

The voice perhaps most associated with television coverage of the Summer and Winter Games will help narrate the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics on NBC Sports.

McKay, who helped make ABC the Olympic network more than three decades ago, is being loaned by ABC to NBC in an unusual talent-sharing arrangement.

It will be McKay's 12th Olympics â€” and first since 1988.

``To say this is unexpected is a tremendous understatement. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the offer,'' McKay said Wednesday. ``It should be the most fun I've had in a long while.''

He will contribute features and commentary in Salt Lake City, while Bob Costas will stay on as NBC's main Olympic studio host.

The 79-year-old McKay brings a wealth of experience and a measure of audience familiarity to NBC's Olympics coverage. Last year's Sydney Games on NBC drew the lowest TV ratings for an Olympics since 1968.

NBC owns the U.S. TV rights to the Olympics through 2008.

``Obviously, to anybody in the United States over the age of 25 or 30, Jim was the person who first brought the power and the majesty of the games to them,'' said NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol, who was a researcher for McKay at the 1968 Grenoble Games. ``He just strikes such a resonance and a chord with them.''

McKay is still under contract to ABC, which agreed to release him for the NBC assignment. Ebersol wanted this arrangement for the Sydney Games, but, McKay said, ``The reason I didn't go is very simple â€” it's too far.''

McKay â€” whose son, Sean McManus, is president of CBS Sports â€” has won 13 Emmy Awards, is the only broadcaster to have won for sports and news broadcasting and writing, and received a Lifetime Achievement in Sports honor in 1990.

He won two Emmys in 1972 for ABC's coverage of the Munich Olympics and the terrorist attack on the Israeli team there. Costas described McKay's work then as ``one of the finest displays of broadcasting that any of us has ever seen.''

His decade-plus absence from Olympic broadcasting bothered McKay, who said Wednesday, ``When it hits you is when it starts and you're not there.''

In his 1998 memoir ``The Real McKay,'' he wrote: ``Since my first Olympics assignment in 1960, I have seen the Games grow tremendously in number of nations entered, number of competitors, number of on-the-scene spectators and television viewers, number of sports on the calendar â€” and the amount of commercialism.''

He added, though, that he would watch the Sydney Games ``wishing that I were still sitting in the anchorman's chair.''

Now he's been granted that wish.