Top Sporting News

NEW YORK – Dick Ebersol has hopeless as NBC Sports Group chairman, an business colossus who helped launch "Saturday Night Live" and shapely the meshwork into the home of the Olympics.

"It has been a sincere permit to verify so some remarkable stories that hit inspired me throughout my entire career," Ebersol said Thursday in a statement released finished the network.

Ebersol had run NBC Sports since 1989, and his feat comes meet threesome weeks before the International athletics Committee opens bids on the incoming ordered of lucrative athletics programme rights in the United States.

The meshwork said NBC Sports Cable Group chair Mark mendicant would verify over for Ebersol.

"It comes as a rank surprise," said Richard Carrion, the IOC chief board member who negotiates U.S. rights. He said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts "assured me they are 100 percent committed to the athletics and the rights process."

NBC merged with the telegram colossus Comcast earlier this year.

A mortal with knowledge of the selection told the AP that Ebersol hopeless in a contract dispute.

The mortal crosspiece on information on obscurity because the meshwork was not releasing a reason for Ebersol's departure. His selection was prototypal reportable by The New York Times.

In constituent to his some meshwork triumphs, Ebersol endured personal tragedy, surviving a form break that killed his teenage son in 2004.

The Ebersols were on their way from the airfield nearby the ski community of Telluride, Colo., to South Bend, Ind., where senior son Charlie attended Notre Dame. The form skidded across the runway, ripped apart and separate into flames, ending his 14-year-old son Teddy, the airman and a flight attendant. Ebersol and Charlie were earnestly injured. His wife, actress Susan Saint James, was not on the plane.

The 63-year-old Ebersol's substance to the athletics dates to 1967, when he temporarily dropped discover of altruist to work at ABC as an athletics researcher.

With the NBC/Comcast merger, Ebersol seemingly gained newfound power and resources with the constituent of the telegram company's sports channels and money. The top symptom in the newborn NBC Sports Group were filled with his colleagues from NBC.

The IOC is holding its sell incoming period for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and 2016 Summer athletics in metropolis de Janeiro. Networks crapper also effort on a four-games collection including the 2018 and 2020 Olympics, whose host cities hit not still been chosen. The IOC is hoping to outgo the preceding $2.2 billion deal.

NBC has programme every Summer athletics since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002.

"After Jacques Rogge, in some ways, he's been the most influential mortal on the athletics movement in terms of both revenue ontogeny and the show of their creation to the globe," said past USOC chair saint Ueberroth. "His skills hit been derived by another major countries and he's created the call of modern athletics Games since 1990."

In 1975, as NBC's administrator of weekend New period programming, Ebersol and Lorne Michaels conceived and developed "Saturday Night Live." Ebersol became NBC's evilness chair of New period planning as a 28-year-old, the network's prototypal VP low the geezerhood of 30. After a brief departure, he returned to "SNL" in 1981 as chief shaper and remained until 1985.

He convergent on his creation company before backward to NBC in 1989.

In Dec 2003, Ebersol united to a nine-year contract finished 2012.

Other than the Olympics, NBC's proximity in another sports had dwindled in past years. It hasn't televised baseball since 2000 or the NBA since 2002.

After losing its rights to the NFL's AFC collection in 1998, NBC picked up the league's Sunday period care play in 2006 and rejoined the Super Bowl rotation. Under Ebersol, the meshwork transformed "Sunday Night Football" into instruction viewing.

___

AP Sports Writer Stephen Wilson in Lausanne, Switzerland, and AP National Writer Eddie Pells in Denver contributed to this report.

Source