The "rah-rah USA" approach began with ABC and has become, despite its critics, the established way to broadcast the Olympics. Barring hard evidence that this style is a major factor in the decline of viewer interest in the Games, no network would dare swim against the patriotic tide. The big problems this year have been the nearly empty venues and the announcing being done from Stamford rather than Beijing. The announcers' enthusiasm sounds phony with no increase in crowd noise to accompany it, and occasionally there's been confusion about what just happened in an event because the announcers are watching a video feed on a screen rather than the event itself.
Just noticed that I put Nantz on NBC. Corrected above.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Not shocking given that past olympics faced similar downward trends.Worst ratings of NBC's olympics coverage.
TV Ratings: Winter Olympics End With Smallest Audience Ever
On the bright side for NBCUniversal, streaming registered solid returns and USA Network got a boost for its coverage of the games.
The other thing that must be kept in mind, even compared to the last winter Olympics, is the amount of people who prefer to watch the events later on Peacock or Comcast instead of watching the prime time offerings on NBC or USA. This is really the first winter Olympics when they've had that streaming/replay option on this large a scale. Many want to watch only the bits and events they're interested in rather than the patchwork of contests that NBC sometimes throws together on a given evening, or they prefer to watch the games themselves and skip the interviews and personal interest stories. For others, they may not have time or the ability to watch in prime-time, so they'll watch the stuff they're interested in later when they're able. All that takes away from the network TV ratings.
Yes that's correct too I remember NBC Sports Regional in the Bay Area had promotions during the NBA on NBC with Golden State Warriors to watch the Olympics on Peacock first before mentioning NBC Bay Area (KNTV) given that the NBC O&O's emphasize local news first in their promos.
The gold medal men's hockey game started at 11:30 p.m. EST. In fact, just about all the hockey games started at that time or even later. I watched just about all of them the next morning on Peacock.
So if the USA had reached the gold medal game, NBC would still refuse to give it a delayed showing in prime time just because the suits are still throwing a hissy fit over losing the NHL rights to ESPN and TNT?
True, although it took nine shootout rounds for Slovakia to eliminate the US in the quarterfinals. But yes, the two finalists, Finland and Russia, had rosters full of players from the second-best professional league in the world, the KHL, primarily a Russian league but which also includes a Finnish team as well as teams in Latvia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and China.
