Olympic Countdown @ Telemundo.

As the New Year starts, Telemundo has begun the countdown to the Opening Ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games taking place this summer in Athens, Greece; an event that will make history on U.S. Spanish-language television.

“We are counting every minute, every hour, every day to bring the best of the Olympics to our viewers,” said Jorge Hidalgo, Executive VP of Telemundo Sports. “We want to bring the very best coverage of our Hispanic athletes and games,” he concluded.

In order to coordinate the programming on Telemundo, the network has created an Olympic Taskforce with the primary goal of developing, creating, and integrating an Olympic strategy across all platforms and departments – a strategy that will complement the NBC Olympic experience and showcase the talent and experience of the Telemundo team as the leader in Spanish-language broadcasting. The network has planned to offer the most in-depth Olympic programming schedule providing the first, and exclusive non-English language Olympic broadcast in U.S. television history.

“Telemundo is making history by being the first network ever to broadcast the Olympic Games in Spanish here in the U.S.,” said Don Browne, COO, Telemundo Network. “This is an extraordinary event and an extraordinary opportunity for Telemundo and our audience, who deserve to watch this internationally renowned sports event in their own language,” he added.

Starting this month, Telemundo will present pre-Olympic programming leading up to the games in August. During the Olympic games, the network will broadcast over 130 hours of programming and the typical daily schedule will run from 1pm until 8 pm Eastern & Pacific.