NEW YORK, MAY 24 -- CBS, which has not televised the Olympic Games since 1960, won U.S. broadcast rights today to the 1992 Winter Games in France for what sources said was $243 million.
NBC, which paid $300 million for the 1988 Summer Olympics that it will televise in September, only bid $175 million for the 1992 Winter Games, sources said. ABC stunned the sports world Monday by refusing to bid at all.
ABC, which has televised 10 of the last 12 Olympic Games, paid $309 million for this year's Winter Olympics in Calgary. Despite high ratings for its coverage in February, ABC suffered a reported $60 million loss on the venture.
On the eve of the opening of bidding here Monday for rights to the 1992 Winter Games, ABC told the International Olympic Committee that it would not take part because it did not want to be involved in what the network said had become a round-by-round auction.
In a statement released to the news media, ABC said that for the past two years it had repeatedly told Olympics officials that the network "would not engage in a multistage auction."
ABC officials have complained that the bidding procedure had been changed from one round to several rounds in order to get higher prices. Olympics officials have said that they consider the process fair.
Richard Pound, chairman of the IOC's negotiating committee, said ABC sought a package for the Winter and Summer Games and the network thought its Olympics ties merited special consideration. "Their position was after they had done so much for so long, it was appropriate to give them some sort of edge," Pound said.
CBS' last Olympics telecasts in 1960 were the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, Calif., and the Summer Games in Rome.