Last week, the American television network NBC announced that it had sold 90 percent of its record $1 billion ad inventory for its coverage of the Beijing Games. NBC will employ seven different networks to broadcast 3,600 hours of Olympic sports, by far the largest two-week undertaking in the history of media.
If you live in the United States and watched any significant portion of NBC's 1,210 hours of Athens 2004 coverage, you know full well that those 20 minutes out of every hour won't be filled with pitches from 3,600 different advertisers. The 30-second spots will run in tight and limited rotation, and the relentless repetition of those ads will, in some cases, leave more of a memory impact than the Games themselves.
Below are several screens from ads that ran hundreds (if not thousands) of times during NBC's 2004 coverage, accompanied by a transcript snippet from the ad in question. If you can identify any or all of the sponsors or their products, or if the phrase "Chain Gang of Love" means anything to you, congratulations -- you watched entirely too much of the Games of the 28th Olympiad on American TV.
"I'm all like, 'be-bop-a-doo-bop'..."
"Do they have 'Maqique'?"
"Yummmmm"
"Hi, honey."
"Trust me, I'm gay."
"More puppies!"
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Sportswriter 
