Special report:   2008 Olympic Games    

    WASHINGTON, July 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. NBC TV station has planned a 2,900 hours of live coverage on the coming Beijing Olympics Games, top the total U.S. TV hours, 2,562, for all previous Summer Games combined, according to a news report on Wednesday.

    The marathon coverage of the Olympics Games was compared by the USA Today report to coverage on the first landing of human on the moon.

    According to the TV station's Beijing TV schedule released on Tuesday, the thousands of hours of live coverage would include all 32 swimming finals and the team and individual finals in men's and women's gymnastics.

    It also said that the live hours would spread across NBC and its cable outlets.

    The unprecedented long live coverage is made possible because the Games organizer scheduled big-time morning action that NBC can air live in prime time, so the TV does not need to hold key events to the prime time.

    Beijing time is exactly 12 hours ahead of Eastern time.