NBC Setting Olympics Ratings Records (30% above network expectations)

NBC may break even as viewership exceeds expectations
August 2, 2012
Television viewers are so excited about the Olympics that NBC’s corporate owners said Wednesday they now expect to break even on the London Games after once predicting they'd take a $200 million loss.

Through five days of events, ratings are some 30 percent higher than what NBC had privately predicted, said NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke. That means NBC can sell more commercial time than expected and charge higher prices for them.

Despite social media complaints about NBC’s policy of filling its prime time with events taped earlier in the day, it hasn’t dissuaded television viewers. There are even indications that it may have helped: 38.7 million people tuned in Tuesday night, when Americans easily could have learned by dinnertime that the country’s women’s gymnastics team won a gold medal that day and swimmer Michael Phelps set a record for career medals earned.

"The guys in the office who make the most noise complaining about NBC’s tape delay watch it for four hours every night,’’ said Anthony Crupi, staff writer at Advertising Week.

http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/olympics/articles/2012/08/02/olympic_tv_ratings_exceeding_expectations/

 

Re: Top 10 Patriotic Sports Towns (NBC Ratings up 8% from live coverage)

I didn't think anybody stayed up past 8 pm in Fort Myers.

 

Re: Top 10 Patriotic Sports Towns (NBC Ratings up 8% from live coverage)

MileHigh, I want to support your argument, but you keep talking about this "Mountain time zone" and I feel like we're in Brigadoon.

 

Re: Top 10 Patriotic Sports Towns (NBC Ratings up 8% from live coverage)

MileHigh,

Perhaps you recall, perhaps not. The vast majority of Seoul stuff was live in the US. Track and field in prime time (late morning/early afternoon in Korea). Gymnastics on the early morning show. Diving in prime time. Basketball prime time and late night. Opening ceremonies live on Friday prime time in US (Saturday morning in Korea). The only major exception was swimming, which organizers refused to move finals to morning time slots.

Ratings were low, but that likely had more to do with it coming in September than the time issue.

NBC's philosophy is to appeal to family and general audiences, not the diehard sports fan. It's also easier to fill in delays (like between swimming events) and edit in features and such than it is when showing it live.

We've been dealing with this for more than 20 years now. I long ago figured out how to block out knowing results when it suited me.

 

Re: Top 10 Patriotic Sports Towns (NBC Ratings up 8% from live coverage)


Let's wait and see the numbers for the whole Games before we uncross our fingers.

 

Re: Top 10 Patriotic Sports Towns (NBC Ratings up 8% from live coverage)

I suspect the numbers will be good. It's July and there's not much else going on. Most other networks are showing reruns. NBC has hyped this enough for the months leading into it to make Joe Public believe it's important.

No matter how you slice it, even in this 24-hour society, a show airing at 8 p.m. is going to get better ratings than something at 11 a.m. We're the exception to the rule. Most people won't adjust their life schedule for the sake of seeing something live vs. on tape

 

Re: Top 10 Patriotic Sports Towns (NBC Ratings up 8% from live coverage)

NBC changed management in the late 1980s and changed philosophies. The idea after Seoul was people wanted tear-jerker stories, not live events. If there are 30 divers per round, show 4-5 and edit in three features. That was about the time they went to tape delay at Wimbledon and everything else except NFL/NBA,.

1992 was the Olympic Triplecast. NBC marketed it as a chance to watch the stuff live. I may have been the only person who bought it. I loved it, but apparently a lot of people passed.

1996 was the real puzzler. With the Games in Atlanta, it set up for everything to be live, but NBC ducked. They let the Europeans dictate the gymnastics schedule, with events starting at 4 or 5 p.m. ET for the sake of European TV. Then they taped a lot of the track and diving stuff for the sake of micromanaging and cutting out what they didn't want.

2000 was in September in Sydney which was a disaster on all fronts. They would show some stuff on cable in the middle of the night, but all the marquee stuff was on a 15-17-hour tape delay.

Most of the marquee stuff from Salt Lake City in 2002 was live except alpine skiing.

Athens in 2004 and Torino in 2006 had afternoon stuff live and prime time stuff on tape because of the time difference.

Beijing you could go live in prime time and late night with swimming, gymnastics, basketball and volleyball Track wasn't going to switch its schedule, so that was a 17-hour taped deal.

The bigger deal to me was always the 3-hour tape delay for the west coast. If you can show NFL/NHL games live in the early evening, why not something as big as the Olympics?

 

Re: Top 10 Patriotic Sports Towns (NBC Ratings up 8% from live coverage)

NBC did that with the Triplecast in 1992. I'm shocked they are not charging a fee for the live streaming this year. If I were still in the business, I would have paid whatever for that, but it wasn't available then.

When you have to pay billions for rights fees, you can show it (or not show it) whenever you feel like it.

If they believed they could do better by going live, why wouldn't they? It's not like a lack of technology is holding anyone back.

I think they do much better now than 20 years ago in Barcelona. They show some events (like this synchro diving) almost full without hoping around from one venue to another. I understand they can't do that too much. If you say "we're going to show swimming from 7-9 and then go to gymnastics at 9 p.m." a lot of people will turn the channel or go to the store and come back for what they personally want. So you have to hop around a certain amount in order to keep people glued to the set. The key is not too much.