NBC Olympics TV and streaming schedule for Feb. 4

Just 180 days after the flame of last year’s delayed Summer Olympics went out in Tokyo, the flame of this year’s on-time Winter Olympics will be lit in Beijing on Friday.

NBC will televise the Opening Ceremony live from China’s capital starting at 6:30 a.m. It will also be streamed live via Peacock, NBC’s subscription streaming platform, and on NBCOlympics.com for free with TV provider authentication.

Mike Tirico hosts the broadcast from the Beijing National Stadium — commonly known as the Bird’s Nest because of its architecture — with Savannah Guthrie joining from NBC Sports’ studios in Stamford, Conn.

The stadium is the same one that hosted the ceremonies at the 2008 Summer Olympics, as Beijing becomes the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Games.

Also on NBC’s crew will be reporters Andrea Joyce and Lewis Johnson, and commentators Steve Kornacki (of election night fame) and former skiing star Lindsay Vonn.

You’ll see other venues from 2008 during these Olympics — in fact, you might already have. The “Water Cube” arena that hosted swimming events back then is now the curling venue, and has been rebranded as (of course) the “Ice Cube.”

Curling is one of the sports that got underway before the Opening Ceremony, as always happens with so much going on. Team figure skating and women’s ice hockey have also already started. The U.S. women’s hockey team opened its gold medal defense on Thursday with a 5-2 win over Finland.

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Contributors to the Opening Ceremony broadcast from beyond the sports world will include Andy Browne, editorial director of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, and Yale professor of East Asian studies and comparative literature Jing Tsu. They are in the stadium with Tirico for the ceremony. NBC said the duo will “provide a broader context of what the U.S. audience is watching in the opening days of the Games.”

The United States and other countries are engaged in a diplomatic boycott of these Olympics over China’s recent record of human rights abuses, including a crackdown on Uyghurs and other Muslims in the country that many outside observers have called genocide. That means their government officials are not attending while their athletes are competing.

» READ MORE: U.S. diplomatic boycott of Olympics pushes back at Beijing’s efforts to control sports stars | Trudy Rubin

Tirico addressed the subject at the very start of NBC’s prime time broadcast Thursday night, in remarks aired live from the network’s Beijing studio at the International Broadcast Center.

“Juxtaposing political controversy alongside an athletic competition that promises drama of its own, with the backdrop of a global pandemic, little about this event will be simple to reconcile over the next two and a half weeks,” Tirico said as John Williams’ famed theme music played over sweeping aerial views of stadiums, mountains, and the Great Wall of China.

“Everything and everyone attached to these Games is facing questions - the hosts, the guests, the IOC, the sponsors, media, and athletes,” Tirico said a moment later. “The United States government is not here, a diplomatic boycott announced this fall - joined by Canada, Great Britain, and Australia - citing China’s human rights record, and the U.S. government’s declaration that the Chinese Communist Party is guilty of committing genocide on the Uyghur Muslim population in the western Xinjiang region. That’s a charge that China denies.”

About 35 minutes into the broadcast, Tirico narrated a segment on human rights in China, including references to Uyghurs and further use of the word “genocide.” There was also footage of police attacking demonstrators as Tirico spoke of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Afterward, Tirico hosted Browne and Tsu for a taped interview. In what proved to be an expansive conversation, the guests had plenty to say. Tirico also used the word “sportswash,” a term for nations that build public reputations through sports in order to move the spotlight from human rights abuses.

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Friday’s ceremony is only expected to last about 100 minutes due to the pandemic and cold weather — much shorter than the Opening Ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo last year, which lasted four hours. Beijing’s time zone is 13 hours ahead of Philadelphia.

Like last year, NBC will also air an edited version of the Opening Ceremonies in prime time Friday at 8 p.m., focused on Team USA and the parade of nations, which once again will be led by Greece — in recognition of its role staging the original Olympics from 776 BC through 393 AD and the first modern Games in 1896.

Curler John Shuster and speed skater Brittany Bowe will be the U.S. flag-bearers. Bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor was to be a flag-bearer, but had to withdraw because she’s in COVID-19 isolation. Bowe replaced her.

While most of the attention on Friday will be devoted to the opening ceremony, there are a handful of Olympic competitions to keep you eyes on, including two-time gold medalist Jamie Anderson competing in qualifying for women’s slopestyle snowboarding Friday night on USA Network and Peacock.

In addition to TV coverage on NBC’s broadcast and cable channels in English and Spanish, every event of every Olympic competition will be available to stream live on NBCOlympics.com. You’ll have to log in with your pay-TV provider, whether cable, satellite, or streaming platforms including YouTube TV, FuboTV and Sling TV.

If you aren’t a pay-TV subscriber, you can watch via the premium tier of Peacock, NBC’s online streaming service. A subscription starts at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year.

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If you have Comcast Xfinity cable, you get Peacock’s premium tier free with your subscription. Go to Peacock’s website to link your cable account if you haven’t already. Xfinity subscribers who have the X1 cable box can also find live streams of events integrated into the sports tab, right next to TV broadcasts.

NBC also has apps for mobile devices, tablets, and connected-TV devices including Android TV, Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Samsung TV, and more. There’s a FAQ page on NBC’s website here if you have more questions.

The full event schedule for the entire Olympics is available here. Live scores and results are available here.

As a general rule, these schedules will include all live broadcasts on TV channels and Peacock, but not tape-delayed broadcasts on cable channels. We’ll let you know what’s on the NBC broadcast network’s prime time and daytime shows whether or not those events are live. These listings cover events that air throughout the day Friday and overnight into early Saturday.