AP wins news gold
for '08 Olympics

The Associated Press, NBC Sports and NBC Olympics have reached an agreement through which AP will serve as exclusive agent for the distribution of NBC-produced content.

In the US, NBCU holds exclusive broadcast and video rights for the 2008 Olympic Games.

The selected material will include text and video links related to the 2008 Olympic Games. AP has a specific online product in mind for serving the material.

The AP's online offering, presumably Olympics-centric, will launch in the next several weeks. It will include exclusive video produced by NBC, and text via NBCOlympics.com, which launched in early August.

NBCU expects to present over 3,600 hours of coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Meanwhile, Chinese brand Sohu, which marked itself the official and exclusive online sponsor for the '08 Olympics two years ago, is aggressively solidifying its position as the sole provider of Olympic-branded ads.