NBC takes an Olympic knock
It's a real shame: What if they held a Winter Olympics, and nobody watched? Nobody from America, anyway. For those who haven't been paying attention - and judging by the ratings figures, that's a lot of people - the Winter Olympics have been underway in Turin (or Torino), Italy, for almost two weeks. Now I like the Olympics (especially the curling, since I do that as a pastime), but I love it even more if I think the rest of the country is joining in the fun. But increasingly, that's not happening, if NBC's Olympics early ratings figures are to be believed. MSNBC.com notes how last week the Olympics were consistently beaten by competing big network shows such as ABC's Lost, Grey's Anatomy, and Fox's American Idol, which doubled the Olympic audience.
What's going on? Are the Olympics dying in this country because nobody cares anymore, or is it just NBC's inability to make the event exciting. Of course, with the general fragmentation of the viewing audience, ratings figures for the Olympics (and most other big sporting events, with the exception of the Super Bowl) have been declining for years. But maybe NBC's not helping. The Baltimore Sun quotes University of Maryland media scholar Douglas Gomery, who argues that NBC's "got no style, no narrative and no ratings . . . NBC is watching its money go down the toilet, because we're not watching the Games." Gomery blames NBC first and foremost, though he notes that "changes in the audience and the way in which other networks are competing have something to do with it, too." What that last point means is that other networks are now challenging Olympic coverage with their own top shows -- i.e., aggressive counterprogramming. They're doing it because they know that NBC is vulnerable, partly due to their incompetence in showcasing the Olympics. Notes the Baltimore Sun:
- The Olympics used to rally viewers of all ages to watch the U.S. hockey team beat Russia or see how the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding catfight played out. This Olympics, though, there is no one big story to unite a fragmented audience, some of whom are glued instead to Idol or - having already heard the news from Turin - are simply uninterested in the tape-delayed broadcast.
"That's the great failure of NBC in this Olympics," Gomery said, "its inability to find or forge a narrative that can inspire a mass audience to be in front of the TV set every night."
posted by hdougie at 2/23/2006 10:33:00 AM
13 Comments:
Personally, I believe the winter Olympics are less favorable for Americans compared to the Summer Olympics. The other day my peers and I am came upon this topic in discussion. We asked ourselves why we weren’t engaged in the Olympics like previous years. We came to conclusion that in the past and Summer Olympics we have major American athletes that have promising expectations for gold medals. When we have star athletes, with famous names, viewers respond. With expectations, we want to watch these star-athletes and see them come out on top. Also, the Summer Olympics have events more nationally popular in the States, for instance sports that are offered in schooling, such as swimming, soccer, track and field, and gymnastics. We, meaning Americans, relate more to those kinds of sports. Snowboarding and skiing in majority is a leisure sport for young children and adults rather then competitively. Therefore, I do not believe its NBC’s station loosing the viewers because of there advertising and coverage but due to the overall feeling towards the Olympics from the people of the states.
Ashley Coon
NBC is not the dud here. they ran promos. the drama is built into the event. there are all those super athletes from....Austria? who cares about Austria? it's apparent that Americans don't. Then there's our obsession with being the best (or being able to THINK we're the best, thank you Nike) or not being anything at all. The public doesn't seem to realize that the US has never been a winter Olympic power and that ANY medal is an achievement for a nation of any status. NBC has had to deal with the bigotry of the American public. Personally, I've enjoyed seeing the best in the world compete in events that i've loved and come to love even over the course of these Torino games. so my hat's off to NBC's coverage and here's to hoping that they keep plugging on despite an increasingly insular audience and that the Neilsens will change their silly and insipid set up for ratings.
Scott Morrison
I personally am a huge fan of the winter Olympics, however much like the person who commented first I agree that the summer Olympics hold much more appeal for both me and many of my friends. I think one of the biggest downfalls with the winter Olympics being held in Turin is the delay in viewing. I love particularly watching the ice-skating events and was almost put off this past Thursday when I planned my night around coming home to watch and earlier that day I logged onto the Internet and the results were the headline of AOL. I didn’t feel like wasting my time watching then when I had other stuff I could be doing and already knew who won. That would be like announcing the winner of Survivor before the first episode of the season. They make the contestants stay quiet about those things for a particular reason, that of which being; people are less likely to watch an event they already know the outcome of. How many people would honestly watch the Superbowl if they already knew what the final score was going to be and who won? Besides the fact that it is possible to find out the status of different events before the actual event is shown on TV in the states, I think there is also an almost negative and lack of interest in the Olympics since it was determined that the summer Olympics would not be held here. I think what NBC needs to do is increase the advertising of the Olympics and the big events and of course it would help raise interest if we new that the Olympics were eventually going to be held in the States again.
Laura Salvalzo
I'm not so sure that NBC's advertising campaign itself can totally be blamed for the lack of viewers for these most recent games. These days I feel that network viewing overall is down as the number of alternatives (MTV, ESPN, Comedy Central, etc.) goes up. When my friends and I are watching tv there is a very small chance that we are going to be watching programming from a major network. This does not mean that we didn't watch the Olympics at all. We actually were avid viewers during the first week and then for whatever reason our viewing (not our interest however) dwindled during the second week. The success for the mentioned ad campaign would also ride heavily on the number of initial viewers of the network. The better their regular programming, the more people are exposed to their vibrant and informative ad campaign during the weeks leading to and during the games, but I just dont see NBC as popular a network as FOX to begin with.
- William Blette
As the third poster correctly stated, it was a disadvantage having the Games in Italy, specifically with the time delay. Being a big curling fan, I had to fight the daily urge to head out to nbcolympics.com to see who had won the matches, rather than tuning into NBC itself and watching the tape-delayed version in the evening. Having the results posted online as they're happening live really takes a lot of the excitement out of the events. The Baltimore Sun has it exactly right - I'd rather watch a live Idol than a tape-delayed figure skating match. That's the chief problem for NBC's ratings.
Brian Galliford
As a self-diagnosed Olympiad addict, I agree that it does detract from the Olympic experience to know that the rest of my fellow countrymen aren't swept up in the action as well. I've watched nothing but the Olympics for the past two weeks (I even missed last week's Project Runway and that's saying something), but with the exception of one singularly addicted co-worker, I've felt kind of alone in my obsession.
I actually thought NBC's coverage in and of itself was pretty good. I *loved* the high-def broadcast, and they showed a lot of events live on their sister networks, which helped. (Though I give a big thumbs down to CNBC for giving away the results of the ladies figure skating competition immediately following their curling coverage, hours before the event aired on NBC. Good lord, people! Didn't you get the memo!)
The main problem here, I think, isn't the tone of the coverage, or the announcers, or even the rah-rah jingoism that leads NBC to focus almost exclusively on American athletes and their "stories." It's the fact that NBC is trying to turn the Olympics into a ratings winner, when it would be better viewed as a public service. To my mind, the major networks should just get out of the Olympics business altogether and turn the Games over to PBS, who could broadcast events live all day long, with recaps in primetime and additional coverage on their digital channels. The upcoming Summer Olympics will be held in Beijing -- 13 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. It would be fantastic beyond words for this Olympic junkie if this change could happen before then (but I'm not holding my breath).
My opinion is that NBC should not be blamed fully for the loss of viewers. Having the most popular sporting events played on prime time was a good choice for NBC. However, when they would be discussing the events that took place that day in advance, they would give away the results of what you would be viewing later on. I feel that if they did not do that, it would have been better. Also, as others have said, the time difference for viewing "live" and "taped" was a disadvantage. Overall however, I feel that NBC did a pretty decent job with broadcasting the Olympics and having the amount of coverage of all the sports is impressive. In some ways, I feel that the summer olympics attract more viewers rather than the winter Olympics due to the sports that are apart of the summer olympics.
Kristen Greiner
This year’s Olympics were some of the lowest rated in history, mostly due to the fact that most of the events were shown in a tape delay. What hurt even more I believe were the events that were shown live, such as Men’s Hockey. The Gold Medal game was over before I had awaken on Sunday Morning, and it was a competition that I had looked forward to watching. The other thing that I believe hurt ratings was ESPN’s coverage of the events that were occurring. Breaks during the morning SportsCenter, allowed viewers to find out results of the events that would be happening in primetime without an advisory that these events could be seen later on in the day. NBC did alert viewers that they were showing “Spoiler” results and to turn away if they did not want to be notified of results.
--David Utnick
When I was little, I remember the Olympics seemed like such a "big deal". In Elementary School, we made a human version of the Olympic rings. Each grade level had to wear different colored t-shirts representing each of the rings. We all circled up outside to create the masterpiece. I do not vividly remember many things in Elementary school, but this ocassion sticks out in my mind. I can only conclude that this was a very exciting day to me as well as my classmates. It inspired me to watch the Olympics. To my knowledge, NBC broadcasts the Olympics very similarly now as it did back then. In essence, I do not place the blame on NBC for the lack of people paying attention to the Olympics. Now-a-days the nation's enthusiasm rests within other, more recent, things on television such as Lost, Grey's Anatomy, and American Idol. As the world changes, so do the interests of the people. We can't blame NBC for that.
Kim Veley
I never thought that much about whether or not I enjoy NBC more or less than any other network on television. But now that you bring it up, I realize that when I think of the television I watch religiously it’s on either Fox (American Idol) or ABC (The Bachelor, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, etc). Personally, I love the Olympics and I would tune in whether or not I knew about the outcome of who took what medals ahead of time. My favorite sport in the winter Olympics is most definitely the figure skating…particularly the female portion of the competition because of all the hype that’s surrounds it every year (Oksana Baiul, Tara Lipinski, Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding, etc). But this year has been the first year in a very long, long time I didn’t even bother to actually watch it…I just checked the headlines on yahoo.com the next morning. I think that I have to agree…NBC does do a rather lousy job of making the broadcast interesting. I was watching the speed skating segment of the competition the other night and NBC’s coverage of it was pretty average…it didn’t really make me excited to tune in for more. Much of NBC’s coverage makes me feel kind of neutral about watching the Olympics…like if I see it, that’s great, if not…oh well. Another interesting aspect of NBC’s “excitement factor” to consider…they have the least number of downloadable pod-casts and TV shows on I-Tunes….maybe they really are missing the big picture these days.
-Mary Kate Scanlon
I'm not a big sports person, and the only Olympic event that interests me is swimming, and that's during the summer. Many that I talk to prefer summer Olympics over winter Olympics. I don't think the low ratings are completely NBC's fault, mainly because there are so many media outlets for one to get Olympics coverage. I have no interest in investing an evening watching an entire event, but if I wanted to know the result, I could go online and get live streaming coverage from MSN, or read a quick review of the results. It also isn't NBC's fault that there really isn't one big story to garner interest in these Olympics as there was with the Nancy Kerrigan saga or the U.S. Hockey team beating Russia. What's needed is a good PR campaign to uncover or twist a good story that would help gain more viewers for the Olympics. Other TV stations are also providing other shows that would deter viewers from watching NBC in order to prevent that network from winning in the ratings war. There are many facets keeping ratings down for the Olympics, so it's not really fair to just blame NBC.
Jennifer Wrobel
I don’t think that NBC is entirely at fault for the poor ratings for the Winter Olympics in Torino. Americans don’t seem to have any interest invested in the athletes competing. Most Olympic athletes are un-known to the general American public. When Americans go to watch TV they want to watch a game with athletes they know a lot about or watch a television show where they have followed the plot line and feel as thought they “know” the characters. The athletes in the Olympics are not well known to the American public. Without sensationalist stories like Nancy Kerrigan v. Tonya Harding, many Americans don’t feel the pull to watch. Why watch a delayed broadcast of the Olympics when you can just find out who wins online anyway or see a recap of an exciting moment? I also feel that Americans don’t feel like they have a common “enemy” or competitor they need to beat. Beating the Russian Hockey team was like beating communism and Americans felt the need to win and the pull to watch. If an event between and American “enemy” like Iraq ( I am not even sure if they can compete this year) was hyped up many Americans would be enticed to watch and support their American team. I myself haven’t followed the Winter Olympics but I know if I was to be drawn into it, it would probably be the result of some athlete’s human interest story or an athlete I liked competing.
Christina Moriarty
I feel like it's my job to defend people who have been skipping out on this years winter olympics..So here goes. With the exception of Sunday night between 10 and 11 o'clock (sorry, there's no way my friends and I were missing Grey's Anatomy), the majority of what my suite has watched has been the olympics. And as much as I hate to say it, they just weren't that good. Don't get me wrong - I love the olympics. The last winter olympics, I basically did nothing else but watch. But this time around, I was more frustrated than anything. The website was completely unclear on local times for events and I ended up missing most of what I wanted to see. It felt like every time I had some time to watch, an event that I was totally uninterested in (a-hem, curling) was on. As far as Grey's Anatomy doing better than the olympics goes, I can't say that I'm surprised. I have never missed an episode and I wasn't about to start this month. I guess that those shows have a more die-hard following than olympic fans.
Lindsay Parker
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