What's better than winning the gold medal in the Olympics?

Good fortune is smiling down upon NBC's Olympic coverage from Beijing.

Last week the broadcaster learned that two of the most popular sports - gymnastics and swimming - will begin at 10 a.m. in Beijing. This means that they can be covered at 10 p.m. in prime time in the U.S. This had been something they were trying to persuade the International Olympics Committee to do (apparently negotiating it for over 5 years!).

However, like a good Ginzu Knife commercial, I add ... but that's not all.

AdAge wrote (subscription needed) in an exclusive that "Dick Ebersol, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics chairman, revealed news about its digital plans ... saying: 'We're not prepared to make the hard announcement, but we'll be in a position to live-stream between 800 and 1,000 hours of coverage in addition to 800 hours on cable and 200 hours on the network.'"

NBC Universal has not decided which distribution streams to use. ... NBC Universal might work with "others outside the family," potentially a rival media company, to stream certain events, Mr. Ebersol said. No decision has been made about whether the streams would be largely ad-supported or subscription-based.

Using rival web sites to stream events!?! Heresy you might say. But digging a little deeper reveals that NBC'ers were disappointed with the Winter Games earlier this year. What would happen is that viewers would learn who won an Olympic event online long before NBC aired it. So, people would record the event, skipping through the hyped coverage and commercials.

Apparently, NBC learned that it had to be more aggressive in its strategy in Beijing. Live sports also are more likely to keep people in their seats during ad breaks and attract engaged audiences.

NBC paid $3.5 billion for Olympic coverage rights until 2012. They will also be able to count on live coverage in 2010 when Vancouver, British Columbia, hosts the Winter Games.