The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics is usually a television blockbuster, scoring the kinds of ratings that are hard to find anywhere these days.  NBC, which is broadcasting the Rio Games in the United States, is trying to keep those numbers high for the Aug. 5 opening ceremony. Forty million Americans watched the 2012 opening ceremony, which was a considerable increase from the 2008 ceremony in Beijing.  NBC has had discussions with the International Olympic Committee hoping to alter the closely watched Parade of Nations so that United States athletes would appear late in the ceremony. According to the network’s proposal, if they were to enter later, viewers would remain tuned in for a program of several hours.  But the idea appears to have collided with tradition.  The rule is fairly simple: Each country marches in based on alphabetical order of the first letter of its name, using the language of the host country. In Brazil, the language is Portuguese, and the United States is Estados Unidos, meaning the country would make its appearance relatively early in the program.  NBC made a request to the I.O.C. that the United States athletes appear somewhere closer to the traditional time slot at the back end of the program, according to a person who was briefed on the matter but did not have permission to speak on the record about it. The network did not ask ceremony organizers to render the United States in English.  In a statement, an NBC spokesman said, “We have regular discussions with our partners at the I.O.C. about everything involved in presenting the best possible Olympics coverage to our audience across the United States.”  When asked about the request, a spokesman for the Rio Games organizing committee, which is arranging the ceremony, referred to I.O.C. guidelines that clearly state that the host nation’s alphabet is what determines the order.  Correction: July 27, 2016 An earlier version of this article misstated the positions of the United States and Russian teams in the order of the Parade of Nations. The United States delegation will enter long before the Russian team — not “just ahead of Russia.”  A version of this article appears in print on July 28, 2016, on page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: Request to Alter Opening Ceremony Collides With Tradition. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The United States will march early in the Parade of Nations this year, based on standard guidelines. But NBC would like to push the Americans back to keep viewers tuned in.