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The Freedom Bowl further distanced itself from its humble beginnings when officials announced Tuesday that NBC would broadcast the Dec. 30 game. No terms were made available, but depending on the success of the game--and its television ratings--the agreement with the network could extend beyond the 1989 game, as well as enhance the payoff for participating teams. Already, Freedom Bowl executive director Tom Starr was calling the deal "another big milestone" in the bowl's five-year history, while NBC executives boldly suggested that a national championship could be played in Anaheim Stadium within a decade.

Comcast Corp. beat analysts' estimates with a 26% increase in fourth-quarter profit, but two NBCUniversal units continued to struggle: the NBC broadcast network and Universal Pictures. For the quarter that ended Dec. 31, the Philadelphia cable television giant posted net income of $1.29 billion, or 47 cents a share, compared with $1.02 billion, or 36 cents, for the year-earlier period. Revenue climbed 3% to $15 billion. Once again, the company's core business of providing bundles of cable TV channels and high-speed Internet service bolstered its financial results.

NBC was the top network for the 1989-90 television season, it was a split decision between "The Cosby Show" and "Roseanne" for No. 1 series, and there was a mysterious drop-off in general television viewing, according to end-of-season figures released Tuesday. The 30-week prime time season ended Sunday with NBC way out in front, posting its fifth consecutive win with a 14.6 rating and a 24 share, according to the A. C. Nielsen Co. ABC was second with a 12.

Now that it has become a Hollywood powerhouse, Comcast Corp. will spend an extra $300 million this year for television programming to revive its newly acquired NBC broadcast network and keep the company's cable channels humming. NBCUniversal Chief Executive Steve Burke on Wednesday renewed Comcast's long-standing pledge to invest millions of dollars more for television programming than the media company's former majority owner, General Electric Co., had been spending. In late January, Comcast acquired a 51% stake in NBCUniversal and GE became a minority partner.

The new prime-time season features several funny comedies. NBC's "Emeril" is not close to being one of them. With renowned super-chef Emeril Lagasse playing himself (not very well, curiously) as the star of a TV cooking show, this is sitcom anorexia, a thudding half-hour of broad nonsense from "Designing Women" creators Linda Bloodworth and Harry Thomason. What were they thinking?

No one likes losing money. But to NBC, the $100 million of red ink it may spill on the Summer Olympics is more like an investment - and a lesson in TV Economics 101. Just about everyone agrees that the $1.3 billion NBC is shelling out for the Summer Olympics won't be recouped by ad revenue. But the Summer Games will pay dividends to NBC that won't show up directly on a balance sheet. Among other things, the network will have a large captive audience - and it will take full advantage of that, rolling out two new sitcoms during the Olympics and using commercial breaks to inundate viewers with promos for its fall prime-time lineup.

Once upon a time, a new TV network needed sports programming and made a deal to broadcast NHL games. The relationship benefited both parties. Over time the network dropped its gimmicky events, gaining major league sports and major credibility. It came to need the NHL much less than the NHL needed the network, and their relationship deteriorated. That network — ESPN — parted ways with the NHL after the 2004-05 lockout, and as much as hockey fans long for ESPN's mainstream cachet, that ship isn't coming back.

It was a tense negotiation. Fox Sports and ESPN were paying about $54 million a year for the TV rights to Pac-12 Conference games. The Pac-12 guys wanted five times that. And a 12-year commitment. The networks were so taken aback that a top executive sarcastically asked if the Pac-12 was smoking something, according to people who witnessed the exchange but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deal. But in the end, the two sides agreed to the biggest TV rights contract in college sports history — a 12-year, $3-billion deal, which works out to a per-year average of $250 million.

The National Football League has signed record-setting television rights deals with Fox, NBC and CBS that will see the broadcast networks pay a total of nearly $28 billion in fees over nine years. That breaks down to an average of $3.1 billion a year, representing a 63% increase over the $1.9 billion paid annually by CBS, NBC and Fox for NFL football under their current contracts. The new accords, which take effect after the 2013 season and run through 2022, come just two months after the NFL signed an eight-year pact with Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN that boosted the cable sports network's average annual rights fee to $1.9 billion from $1.1 billion.