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As covered yesterday, The Olympics on NBC are turning out to be a disaster for ratings. That’s being spun today, but it’s still the truth. Let’s take a look at two different ways that media is covering the story:
On Sports Media Watch, we have: “NBC flops in primetime to open Winter Games”
Thursday’s primetime coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics averaged 7.25 million viewers on NBC, marking the smallest primetime Olympic audience ever on the network. The previous low was 8.5 million for the final night of competition at last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics.
So the lowest ever recorded viewership for the Olympics was the final night of competition in the lowest watched Olympics ever, due in no small part to it taking place during a pandemic, during the summer, when people were excited to go outside. And the new lowest ever recorded viewership is the opening ceremony for the current Olympics — the opening ceremony. That means this, by far, as good as it’s going to get.
Alright, so let’s see how it’s being covered by the major news outlets and trades… specifically, let’s go to Deadline (although you can go verify it’s all pretty much the same with the other options):
“Winter Olympics Coverage Dominates”
The difference is subtle, eh?
The first night of the games, which came before Friday’s grand opening ceremony, included coverage of the qualifiers for men’s and women’s freestyle skiing, figure skating and more. Per fast affiliates, NBC took Thursday primetime with a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demo and 7.39 million viewers. The non-adjusted numbers of last night’s broadcast was down significantly from 2018’s PyeongChang games (3.4, 14.53M). Numbers are set to rise pending adjustment, as is often the case with major live events.
Ahh… you have to read down into the article to see that the “grand opening ceremony” is down by half of the last Winter Olympics. But we end with the positive, numbers going to rise, of course. What they don’t say is that they’ll rise modestly. And who is doing these numbers, by the way? Is it NBC’s new company that they’ve hired to cover the ratings because Nielsen might actually reveal the numbers are worse? That’s just my conjecture there, but I’m curious who is reporting the ratings. Because nobody is saying from which source the Daily Broadcast numbers were derived, it leaves the door open that they could be from NBC’s own hired hands. After all, companies aren’t happy with the traditional ratings experts.
So what’s the real truth about all of this?
Well, it’s all about perspective. Did the Olympics “dominate” the ratings last night? They more than doubled the next highest rated show. Did the Olympics underperform? They’re down more than 60% from four years ago. The biggest thing, however, is that NBC paid 7.75 billion dollars for the Olympics through 2032. Considering last night was the opening ceremony, you could be seeing a Winter Olympics to Winter Olympics drop of 70% viewership overall. When you’re dealing with billions of dollars at stake, the Olympics shouldn’t just be doubling anything else on TV. The Olympics were purchased by NBC at that number in order to produce near Superbowl levels of ratings.
Does that mean the ratings are “dominating” or a “flop”. You decide.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and keep checking out That Park Place for all your entertainment news!