Up and down sides to '88 Olympics The 1988 Olympic games, winter and summer, should pump well over $1 billion ofrevenue into broadcasters' hands this year.

That's the good news. The bad news, at least for ABC, whose carriage of the winter games began Saturday (Feb. 13) from Calgary, Canada, is that its share of Olympic revenue won't cover its substantial investment in the games' broadcast rights and production costs.

NBC, which expected its summer games (running Sept. 17-Oct. 2) to be profitable, is tempering its optimism, however, because of potential ratings competition from baseball and football.

For affiliates there is some evidence Olympic availabilities may not be as strong a drawing card as they once were, leaving station revenue gains less than in past Olympic years ("Top of the Week," Feb. 1).

Estimates of ABC's potential losses from the winter games, running for 16 days through Feb. 28, range from $30 million to as much as $50 million.

The loss is mainly due to the record-setting $309-million rights fee required to air the games, the most ever paid for an Olympics and more than three times what ABC paid for the 1984 winter games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.

The costs mount to more than $400 million when counting the roughly $100 million ABC will spend to cover the games, which this year totals some 98 hours, compared to the 63 hours it carried in 1984.

Even with 53 hours in prime time, and many of its roughly 1,800...