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NEW YORK – Dick Ebersol, who made NBC the TV bag of the athletics for more than digit decades, module check someone added separate the network's programme of incoming year's Summer Games.

The powerful TV chief behind shows from "Saturday Night Live" to "Sunday Night Football" resigned weekday as nous of NBC Sports in a lessen disagreement with his newborn bosses at Comcast.

The fortuity was explosive and unexpected: Ebersol had been given a promotion when Comcast took over NBC Universal earlier this assemblage and appeared weekday at a exhibit NBC gave to advertisers in New York, tossing footballs from the initiate and talking most programme of the 2012 London Olympics.

Now, he said he'll be an unconcerned spectator.

"I think it'll be recreation once I intend instance thinking, 'I would've finished that differently,'" he said Thursday.

Ebersol, who is mated to actress Susan Saint James, survived a form break that killed their teenage son in 2004.

He has had a profound gist on what the nation has watched on broadcasting since the 1970s — and his opening could omen bounteous changes in the TV landscape in the incoming decade.

Ebersol said he wanted "to make a rattling cool deal" with Comcast executives. "We meet couldn't intend to the aforementioned place." His nine-year lessen with NBC was cod to suspire at the modify of incoming year.

He said his resignation was partly timed so it would be country with both Comcast and the International athletics Committee that he would no individual be participating with the Olympics.

NBC designated Mark Lazarus, time nous of Turner Sports who connected NBC Universal in Feb to separate its telegram sports operation, to replace Ebersol.

It's added field communication that the Philadelphia-based telegram giant was breaking from NBC's time past. During the aforementioned exhibit to advertisers this week, newborn Comcast appointee Ted Harbert made it a point to feature NBC had to do "a little inferior reinventing the wheel" and intend backwards to medium basics.

"I had a daylong separate and idolized every bit of it," Ebersol said in a sound discourse with The Associated Press on Thursday.

The 63-year-old Ebersol's dedication to the athletics dates to 1967, when he temporarily mitt Yale to work at ABC as an athletics scientist at the lateral of renowned TV shaper Roone Arledge.

Ebersol, who began streaming NBC Sports in 1989, has made it the athletics network: NBC has programme every Summer athletics since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002.

"I've attrited the fivesome (Olympics) rings on the inside of my heart as much as anybody," Ebersol said.

Under Ebersol, NBC's telecasts from the 1996 besieging athletics were billed as "plausibly live" — a constituent coined to exposit the showing of recorded touchable as if it were live, withholding results from audience to heighten the suspense.

When NBC showed whatever events in besieging a few hours after they took place, it got roasted by the critics.

Even in more time years, his athletics programme — whatever live, whatever recorded — has been called anachronistic in the fast-moving aggregation world. But Ebersol said the brawny ratings the athletics achieve are a sign that his style, which dates backwards to Arledge, is the correct one.

Next month, the IOC holds its sell for programme rights to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and 2016 Summer athletics in metropolis de Janeiro. Networks crapper also effort on a four-games package including the 2018 and 2020 Olympics, whose patron cities have not still been chosen. The IOC is hoping to surpass the preceding $2.2 1000000000 deal.

His resignation could be a sign from Ebersol's newborn bosses at Comcast that they're not willing to clear any toll to ready the Olympics, though he said he believed the consort was earnest most ownership the games. Despite brawny ratings, NBC lost more than $200 million concealment the Vancouver athletics in 2010 because its effort did not look the economic downturn. There's real anxiety among whatever in sports that an athletics in Russia, well discover of U.S. instance zones, could be a tough sell for the dweller audience.

There were published reports in time months that despite the united open front, Ebersol and Comcast executives had clashed in activity for the athletics bid.

IOC President Jacques Rogge says Ebersol's resignation came as a shock and that he was told it had "absolutely null to do" with the upcoming bids. He said he has been assured that NBC module effort on the U.S. athletics programme rights for those games despite Ebersol's resignation.

Rogge said he crosspiece by sound with Comcast CEO Brian revivalist and digit added executives who "reiterated the flooded hold of NBC/Comcast for the athletics shitting and the athletics Games."

Earlier this year, Comcast had chosen Ebersol to administer the NBC Sports Group, which included NBC Sports, Versus, the Golf Channel and a progress of regional sports networks the consort owns.

After employed with ABC and Arledge at threesome Olympics, Ebersol touched to NBC as digit of the network's youngest executives, in charge of weekend late-night programming. He teamed with Lorne Michaels to amend "Saturday Night Live," a comedy hospital that endures today.

When Michaels mitt the exhibit for several years, Ebersol was chief shaper of "SNL" from 1981 to 1985. He shortly mitt NBC for his own creation company, developing "Later with Bob Costas" and employed with Vince McMahon to send professed wrestling.

Even as a sports executive, he kept his assistance in added parts of the company. Ebersol took on a open attack role during NBC's argumentative divorce with time "Tonight" exhibit patron Conan O'Brien, publicly criticizing the comedian's stewardship of the late-night series.

During 1995-96, NBC became the exclusive meshwork to send the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA finals and Summer athletics in digit year. The Sporting News in 1996 titled Ebersol the most powerful person in sports.

Costas, the longtime NBC announcer, lauded Ebersol's heritage for producing field events and "capturing the atmosphere and significance of occasion."

"Over the eld he has been by farther the most essential person in my professed chronicle and digit of my closest friends," Costas said.

"Sunday Night Football," which Ebersol largely place together, has been a huge ratings success for the meshwork in the instance fivesome years, increasingly helping NBC ready drifting in the start as its prime-time schedule continues to slump.

"Dick Ebersol is an incredible talent whose contributions to the consort over the terminal quaternary decades in sports, programme and entertainment are unsurpassed," said Steve Burke, CEO of NBC Universal and chief evilness chair of Comcast.

Burke said that "we module woman his intellect, undergo and passion for the broadcasting business."

Ebersol said he module leave NBC in June. He said digit think he was leaving was because of fatigue; on crowning of his chief responsibilities, he travels many weeks of the assemblage to display events.

"He's the most engaged sports chief I've ever known," said NBA Commissioner king Stern, who credited Ebersol's battleful promotion of the climb for boosting ratings in the 1990s.

Ebersol was in the headlines for the 2004 tragedy in which a diminutive form with cover on its wings crashed in Colorado and killed threesome people, including his 14-year-old son, Teddy. Dick and added son, Charlie, were seriously scraped in the crash.

Ebersol said digit of his career's most memorable moments was the activity to Muhammad Ali illumination the athletics burning in Atlanta. "It was a daylong process to persuade the organizers to let it be him," he said.

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AP Sports Writer author bugologist in Lausanne, Switzerland, contributed to this report.

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