NBC has now attracted 174 million unique viewers in the United States who have watched at least six minutes of Summer Olympics coverage on television. The broadcasts have now reached over 60% of the total television viewing audience in the US. Through six days, it’s still well ahead of the Athens games
56 million unique viewers had watched at least six minutes through one of NBC Universal’s cable nets through the first five days of coverage.
The 2am-2pm portion on USA network is averaging more than a million viewers (1.044). This may sound insignificant, and versus the broadcast network it certainly is, but just one twelve hour chunk of viewing on USA network generated more than three times the total viewing minutes for all six days of online video viewing combined.
Coverage on MSNBC is averaging 649,000, CNBC is averaging 638,000 and Oxygen us averaging 713,000 viewers for its 6pm-8pm coverage.
Primetime viewing on NBC is averaging 30.8 million per night (across what is often actually more than 4 hours), well ahead of the 26.2 million the Athen’s games averaged. And as James Hiberd notes, the olympics are boosting ratings for Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien on NBC’s The Tonight Show and Late Show.
While Wednesday night’s viewing in primetime did average under 30 million (27.7 million , Michael Phelps was not going for a gold medal last night) total cumulative reach last night during primetime was 72 million (who watched at least six minutes).
While I applaud NBC for rolling out its Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMi), it’s confusing some of the knuckleheads in the press who conclude from it that a greater percentage of people are watching online than actually are. This is somewhat a function of too much data around to be misused by people who are not data junkies. For example, NBC published the total television audience for Tuesday (96.8 million) and the total Web audience (7.7 million). There are some who would conclude from those numbers that 92% of the viewing of events occurs on television.
But when you see the minutes for the actual streams (which actually are very impressive numbers for the Internet) it’s more like 99.5% of the viewing of the Summer Games is coming from television.
I think an interesting indicator to watch of whether NBC will be successful this fall is how MSNBC does the Saturday right after the olympics — with over 8 hours of dayside Olympics coverage, it has given them a very strong platform to advertise the upcoming Democratic (and Republican) conventions. If they can manage to beat CNN & FOX (CNN in particular for the Dems convention), it MAY perhaps bode well for NBC, or at least give them some comfort that people were paying attention to the ads.
the amount of beach volleyball coverage is over the top – way too much for prime time. Who cares except those in southern california
NBC is so mean that they show events with American contenders only! NO American Forget. An American win takes 10 minutes of post analysis and replay! while other events going on in the background! This is crazy.
It would be prudent enough to cover all events fairly. Too much of swimming, too much of gym and beach volleyball, and too less of track, soccer and anything else, makes coverage very boring. I personally took vacation to give myself time to watch the games but all a disappointment.
NBC Coverage is the worst in the world. The quality of the program is good but very little substance.
They cover only swimming, gymnastics and beach volly ball during prime time. Most other athlets are not prime time worthy in NBC business mind.
I get to see more of Mysty May/Walsh ass on TV than any other sports.
When did Beach volly ball became a prime sport in US?
SHAME ON NBC!!!!
!!!!Show sports not stories!!!!
And BOB C is absolutely annoying.
NBC's coverage of beach volleyball over so many other, time-honored events is appalling. Few people agree that beach volleyball should even be an olympic event.
So why devote so much time to it? I just flipped to another channel every time it came on.
The worst coverage ever. Endless Beach blanket volleyball, too much diving and womens gymnastics. Coverage of non-sports like synchronized swimming and girls running around waving a stick with a piece of cloth attached, every step of two marathons, but very little Archery, Shooting, Sailing, Equestrian, etc etc.
DUMP NBC! should be the motto for London in 2012
NBC coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games was bad. I wish they have more coverage of games and less commercials. I know that Corporate America paid for the expenses to bring the Olympics coverage to us, but they have excessive commercials.
THE CLOSING CEREMONY COVERAGE WAS TERRIBLE. I have never seen a coverage in which NBC decided to show few minutes of the closing ceremony, then switch to some competition games, then commercial. This was annoying for the people. They did the whole closing ceremony. There must be a reason. I guess it was to try to please the corporate sponsors or NBC did not have time to show more games before the closing ceremony. NBC perhaps wanted to catch up.
In short, Beijing Olympic 2008 coverage was very bad. It makes you not to watch it because all the commercials, etc. I wish other TV networks had the opportunity to show the games and perhaps do a better job than NBC.