NBC Bets Viewers Will Watch Olympics Year-Round – Wall Street Journal

Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal unit will launch an Olympic television channel in the summer of 2017 in a joint venture with the International and U.S. Olympic Committees, according to executives involved in the venture.

The planned launch, which the organizations will formally announce Thursday, comes amid falling ratings for the Olympics in the U.S. and a renewed effort by the IOC to create a new generation of Olympic sports fans. The new channel will be one of a number of Olympic-branded local, digital and television…