Over 92 million people caught part of Saturday’s coverage. It’s definitely the peacock network’s day in the sun and I can’t say I fault it for wanting to puff it’s feathers out. So far 114 million people have watched at least some of the olympic coverage. That means more than 40% or two out of five people over the age of two have caught at least some of the coverage. Here’s the full NBC press release with more data:
NBC’s BEIJING OLYMPICS ON PACE TO BE MOST WATCHED OLYMPICS IN HISTORY WITH 114 MILLION VIEWERS
BEIJING -Aug. 10, 2008 -NBC Universal’s Beijing Olympics coverage is on pace to be the MOST WATCHED OLYMPICS IN HISTORY. Through two days NBCU has attracted a record 114 million total viewers – four million more than Atlanta in 1996 – the most watched Olympics in history and nearly 20 million more than Athens (95 million), according to data provided Nielsen Media Research.
- Saturday’s coverage on the Networks of NBC Universal reached 92 million total viewers, 14 million ahead of the comparable Saturday from Athens in 2004 (78 million).
- NBC’s Beijing Olympic two-day average viewership is 29.1 million and the national rating average of 16.2/30 is the best primetime rating through the first Saturday for a non-U.S. Summer Olympics since Montreal in 1976 (22.1/46) and a 22 percent jump from Athens in 2004 (13.3/25).
- Saturday night’s 24.1 million average viewers bested Athens by nearly 4.5 million viewers (19.8) and earned a rating of 13.9 rating/27 share, an 18 percent jump from Athens in 2004 (11.8/23).
- NBC’s LIVE primetime coverage, which included Michael Phelps collecting his first Beijing gold medal and seventh career Olympic gold medal in the 400m Individual Medley, and Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh winning their first match in Beach Volleyball, peaked with a 16.4/30 and 28.7 million average viewers in the 10 p.m. half hour.
MORE PHELPS IN PRIMETIME ON NBC:
“PHELPS IS TIGER [WOODS] IN A SPEEDO.” – NBC’s Dan Hicks:
Monday will be another busy day for Michael Phelps, and it’s all LIVE in primetime on NBC. First, he’ll swim for what could be his record-tying ninth career Olympic gold medal and third gold medal of the Beijing Games in an event he dominates, the 200m freestyle. Less than an hour later, the semifinal in another Phelps-dominated event, the 200m butterfly.
Then on Tuesday on NBC LIVE in primetime, Michael Phelps could become the greatest Olympian of all-time, swimming in two gold medal finals – the 200m butterfly and 4×200m freestyle relay. It is the only night where he could potentially win two gold medals – and he set world records and won both swims at the 2007 World Championships. This could be the night when Phelps breaks the all-time record for career gold medals, which is currently nine and shared by four athletes, including USA’s Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz.
NBCOLYMPICS.COM ROLLS:
NBCOlympics.com followed up its record day on 8/8/08 with another enormous day of traffic. On Saturday (traditionally the lowest trafficked day of the week), the site garnered 62.7 million page views an increase of 475 percent from the opening day of competition of the Athens Games in 2006 (10.9 million).
- Through two days NBCOlympics.com has totaled 132.6 million page views compared to 17.9 million page views for the first two days of the Athens Games an increase of 641 percent.
- NBCOlympics.com registered 3.1 million video streams yesterday. By comparison, in Athens, the first day of competition received 115,014 video streams.
- 4.83 million unique users logged onto NBCOlympics.com yesterday an increase from the 4.21 million for 8/8/08 and nearly six times the unique users from the first day of competition in Athens (816,609 million).
NBC Universal, broadcasting its record 11th Olympics and surpassing ABC for the most Olympics broadcast by any network, will present an unprecedented 3,600 hours of Beijing Olympic Games coverage, the most ambitious single media project in history featuring the most live coverage (nearly 2,900 live hours in total), across the most platforms, of any Summer Olympics in history.
TVa, I agree with your analysis. Setting + economy are big factors. Having so many outlets on cable airing content helps as well, though the other broadcast nets (save perhaps CBS) would have been able to do similar multicasting.
Tell the chick announcing synchronized swimming to SHUT UP!
I, and many of my friends, are really disappointed that NBC has decided to use OXYGEN for televising a majority of the equestrian events. Many of us do not have OXYGEN as part of our cable packages. I realize that there are many events to cover, but it seems to me that equestrian events are just as interesting to many of your viewers as the events being televised on standard NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, and USA. Not all people have computers to access these events in that manner. I hope you will consider this when planning for other olympic years. Other than that, coverage has been great. Thank you!
NBC and media is turning this into the “Phelps Olympics”…granted he is greatest swimmer of all times….but enough …there are plenty of other great stories and athletes to cover. Costos keeps asking if he is greatest olympian ever?….Who is to say if any one individual in one event is greater than someone in many events in track and field or long distance i.e Flanagan 10,000 m……by paying to much attention to Phelps you are doing a big injustice to other athletes.
This is absolutely the worse coverage of the Olympic games I have ever seen. If I never see another beach volleyball game again it will be way too soon. Yesterday we were treateated to 2 1/2 hours (??????) of the women's marathon when they could have been switching between the marathon and other events. These are the Olympic “GAMES”!!!!!!! Not the “Olympic ONE-OR-TWO SPORTS”. What absolutely miserable coverage. Shame on you NBC
Kaleb, I'm with you on the Women's Marathon, which seemingly covered every step for over 2.5 hours!
Does anyone know of site where I might be able to find historical viewership for Olympics coverage? Obviously, Beijing is putting up great numbers, but I'm interested to see if there is a comparison to all of the Olympics by year thus far.. With this Olympics we should also consider the great deal of investment NBCU has put into marketing the event and driving viewers online through their promo spots
There's quite a bit of historical data on the summer games (for US viewing) going back to 1968 here:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/08/08/historical...
This was the worst coverage of an Olympics ever. Last time was bad, but this was awful. Vast coverage of semi-sports like Beach blanket volleyball, and silly affairs – they are not sports – like synchronized swimming. More diving and women's gymnastics than I care to watch, and they showed the ENTIRE Mens and Womens marathon! yet very little coverage of many traditional sports. The IOC need to seriously pare down many of these non-sports. NBC gets an F and I wish some other station would pick it up .
The Olympic Games are first and foremost about bringing people together. The athletes become for a time the ambassadors of their respective nations to the world. The wonderful thing about The Games is that they allow people from around the world to extend their hands to one another against the tapestry of international sports despite the realities of national policies and conflicts. There are always controversies at the Games to be sure, but the tears in the eyes of athletes during the medal ceremonies says to me that the Spirit of The Games is what matters most.
Its obvious to me from watching NBC's coverage of the Beijing Olympics, that network television is more concerned about ad revenues than content. The coverage has gotten so narrowly focused during the televising of The Games that only a dozen or so sports receive any substantial attention. Many specific events and their participants are recycled ad nauseum in order to make room for still more advertising opportunities. Human interest stories about the little know competitor can do much for ratings too. Why? Because they speak to the hearts of the viewing audience. A viewing of the film “Seabiscuit” speaks directly to what I'm talking about. NBC and the other networks need to get over this aversion to speaking to people's hearts, or viewership will continue to decline, despite the current Olympic spike. Now, I realize that the Oympics are very costly to air, but what happened to the Spirit of The Games? Over two hundred nations send their athletes to compete, but only about 15-20% of them are seen. I am particularly distressed by NBC's lack of coverage of equestrian and sailing sports. On the other hand, I feel the network's scheduling of a ratings gold mine like the USA Men's Basketball final for 2:30 am, downright laughable. Talk about the squandering of opportunity! Finally, why is it that we never see a wonderful color commentator like Dwight Stones on camera, or that an accomplished broadcaster like Jim Lampley is always so dead-pan? Kudos to Bob Costas, and to Mary Carrillo for her enjoyable forays among the people and customs of China.
Being from Spain I´ve seen other olympic games there broadcast by the local TVE. Normally they introduce all the competitors, they don't shout, they concentrate on the event and they cover a variety of events. It's a pleasure to watch.
But I've seen these games in the States and this is my assessment of NBC's coverage: soap operas, mushy stuff, silly stories that have nothing to do with the Olympics, stupid guys running around a fountain, too many opinions, too much irrelevant meta-information, few events, the irritating beach voleyball (not a real sport), too much political manipulation (the story of the paraolympic who got paralyzed in Iraq “for defending his nation”, yeah right!), TV speakers out of control, yelling like monkeys, because Phelps finished 1 millisecond before the next guy.
Disgusting. I don't want to watch another Olympic games like that even if I have to travel to the worst country in this planet. It can't be worse than this.