? The NBC Olympics' chief expects the company's expanded Snapchat relationship to yield advertising and viewing gains for its Winter Olympics programming, helping to transition a youthful audience to longer-form content over time.

? The proliferation of connected televisions is expected to significantly improve usage above the 2016 Rio Games.

? Despite the growth seen in digital, linear TV is expected to remain the games' dominant viewing platform.

Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal Media LLC on Feb. 8 will initiate a record 2,400 hours of linear and digital coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics. In a wide-ranging interview, S&P Global Market Intelligence recently spoke with Gary Zenkel, president, NBC Olympics and Business, NBC Sports Group, about programming logistics, viewer projections and advertising revenue for the Pyeongchang Games. An edited transcript follows.

S&P Global Market Intelligence: How many people will you have in South Korea?

Gary Zenkel: They began arriving more than four months ago. We will have 2,000 on the ground when the games begin.

How does that stack up with past efforts?

It's in the ballpark. It's not just us, but includes the "Today" show and news personnel; those not just working on the Olympics.

The technology continues to advance in a way that allows us to do more remotely, so with compression and bandwidth, we're moving stuff to the [International Broadcast Center] and Stamford [Conn., home to NBC Sports headquarters, studios and production facilities]. Yet with the continued increase in the amount of content, we don't get smaller.

In addition to the 2,000 people in Pyeongchang, we'll have 900 people in Stamford completely dedicated to producing content for the Olympics.

NBC Olympics has expanded its relationship with Snapchat?

There is a very concentrated audience, ages 18 to 30, many under 25, that spend a tremendous amount of time sitting on that platform. We want to fuel what is hopefully an Olympic conversation that is already under way without us and then push them toward key moments and stories.

We'd like to see them move toward longer-form content, to see things unfold live. We have the Olympics for 14 years, and we want the games to be relevant to them, to remain the cultural phenomenon it is. So we're going to nurture that young audience where they engage with the Olympics now and we're certain some will migrate to the other platforms.

You're going to stream the opening ceremony live for the first time. Will there be more consumption than from the 2014 Sochi Games?

What we have recognized now over a long period of time is that the more we circulate the content, the more we make available, the more total consumption there will be. It's really important to be able to tell that story and not allow any single metric to judge interest, engagement and consumption of these Olympics. There were 34 million Snapchatters who viewed NBC Olympic content from Rio. That will go up; the time they spend will go up as we produce more content for the platform.

Consumption also will increase on our own domain platforms: the NBC Sports app and NBCOlympics.com. There is going to be more consumption through the NBC Sports app on connected televisions. Connected TVs were relatively new during Rio, accounting for 3% of our unique digital viewers, but 30% of total digital viewership. There is far greater penetration today and with their ease of use and navigation, connected TVs are going to drive even more viewership and not necessarily displace anything else.

How will linear viewership hold up?

Linear will continue to be the predominant platform for viewing at the Winter Olympics. With everything I just said, 97% of the viewing from the Rio Olympics was on linear television.

There are favorable time zones for live viewing of marquee events.

Here's what I think will happen: The audience, as they always have, will gather in front of their 40-, 50- or 60-inch TV screens with great HD pictures in their living room and watch the Olympics together on NBC (US) in prime time. I think you'll see people watching the figure skating, alpine skiing or snowboarding live on TV and then when the men's hockey game comes on at 10 p.m. they also are going to open up the NBC Sports app to see the hockey, which runs until 12:30. So maybe when the prime-time telecast ends at 11:30 p.m., they might switch over to watch the rest of the hockey on the big screen on NBCSN (US). Then, they might be interested in the second slalom run because they saw Mikaela Shiffrin's first run in prime time. They're going to keep watching the hockey game on TV and also watch the skiing on the NBC Sports app. That [multiscreen] behavior is becoming much more prevalent, and I think [it] will drive more consumption.

You're looking at more than $900 million in national advertising sales, a Winter Games record?

This Olympics, perhaps more so than others, is attracting new advertisers. In some cases, where some of the [International Olympic Committee and United States Olympic Committee] sponsors didn't buy out the whole category, we’re seeing new companies in those sectors get in the Games. With more companies delivering messaging to their customers via us and other social media, that means there are more stakeholders pushing more audience into the Olympics.

What will be the legacy of the Pyeongchang Games from the company's perspective?

I think [the Comcast] X1 [operating system] will really offer an amazing lift to the Olympics audience because of the way its delivers a vast amount of content organized around the Winter Games. That's based on user experiences and learning from Rio. That suggests to us in programming that the easier you make it for consumers to find the content they are looking for, the more time they will spend with the media.

We're spending a lot of time on our digital devices on search, discovery and organization of content. I think there will be more interesting learning from that. Consumption will continue to grow on platforms like Snapchat and connected televisions.

From a cultural perspective, I do think the Olympics has already demonstrated over the last couple of weeks [North Korea teaming with South Korea] its unique ability to bring people, family and nations together. Maybe that's slightly magnified by the current state of the world.

The Olympics really gives us a chance to take a bit of a break from what's going on and offers a fair amount of optimism that we can all come together peacefully.