There is no sense of panic just yet from American television executives, but the Beijing 2022 Games are on track to deliver the lowest ratings for NBC in Winter Olympics history.
The Games started on a conspicuous note for the network as the Opening Ceremony attracted just 16 million viewers in the United States, the lowest total ever for an opening ceremony. The PyeongChang Games drew 28.3 million viewers for their opening. Over 31 million people watched the opening ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Games.
Through the first four nights of competition, NBC’s ratings are trending towards historic lows for an Olympics. Their coverage is averaging just fewer than 13 million viewers, well below the 27.8 million average for PyeongChang four years prior. Tuesday night was particularly bad, with just eight million people tuning into primetime television coverage. Eight million represents the smallest primetime Olympics audience ever recorded.
Despite the doom and gloom numbers, NBC executives were quick to put a positive spin on their coverage.
“The sky is definitely not falling,” said NBCUniversal Television Chairman Mark Lazarus. “Yes, there are a bunch of bad factors making it harder for us, but we’ve had a realistic view on the audiences we’re going to deliver, and we are delivering what we promised to the marketing community.”
“Our trend line is pretty good. We are feeling that America is finding the Olympics.”
What Americans are finding are a Winter Olympics dealing with a global pandemic, a lack of fans and real snow, not to mention a host nation whose relationship with the United States could be described as “strained” at best.
Lazarus will be pleased to note ratings did increase Saturday and Sunday night as actual competition began, but so far they are consistently drawing about half of their audience from PyeongChang 2018. The Beijing Games are also far outdrawing any other counter-programming during primetime hours.
Another factor for the low numbers could be the extreme 13-hour time zone difference between Beijing and New York. All of the primetime coverage is on tape-delay in the U.S.
Similar to last summer when the Summer Olympics were in Tokyo, primetime viewing was down 47 percent from Rio de Janeiro 2016.
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