NEW YORK - NBC News could rent a small plane just for the top news personalities going to Beijing to cover the Olympics: Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Ann Curry, Lester Holt, Richard Engels, Kevin Tibbles and the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore among them.

CBS considered sending Harry Smith, but decided against it and is sending Barry Peterson. Weekend anchor David Muir is ABC’s biggest name heading to Asia. Dana Lewis is Fox News Channel’s lone representative. CNN is largely handling the story through its Beijing bureau, keeping frequent-flier Anderson Cooper at home.

Guess which network’s sports division paid nearly $900 million for the rights to televise the Olympics?

The rapid change occuring in China means there’s likely to be more news beyond sports in Beijing than most Olympics. Television news organizations face many challenges, including the decision of how much money and personnel they should devote to an event where NBC has the insider’s edge.

“It makes our lives difficult,” said Paul Friedman, senior vice president of CBS News. “But what we’ll do is what everyone in this situation does. You go and look for the stories around the Olympics that you can get access to and this time around they may be as interesting as the Olympics themselves.”

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written by Andrew