NBC Estimates Sochi Olympic Ratings Down 15% From Vancouver Games

[Initech]

NBC and Nielsen were expected to release more detailed ratings information on Tuesday, but preliminary estimates show the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics averaging a strong 21.4 million viewers in primetime.

While down 12% from the 24.4 million who watched on average during the more time zone-friendly Vancouver Games of 2010, it’s up 6% from the 20.2 million average for the last European Winter Games in Torino in 2006.

The Closing Ceremony from Sochi on Sunday averaged about 15.1 million viewers, well below the 21.4 million who watched the final night from Vancouver (following that afternoon’s Team USA-Canada men’s gold medal game). It was up slightly from the 2006 Torino closer (14.8 million).

From a competitive standpoint, the Olympics have never been more dominant. For the first complete week of the Games (Feb. 10-16), NBC logged its most lopsided primetime victory in network history.

http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/nbc-averages-21-4-million-for-sochi-olympics-down-from-vancouver-but-up-from-torino-1201118839/

Argh the only thing I really wanted to watch was hockey which was only shown at like 3:00 AM and then when they showed the highlights all we got were still photographs.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

1. Yeah, I stayed up/woke up for the Nagano games

Can't do that no more....

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. event. ad. event. ad. event. ad ad ad event....really impacted the enjoyability

not just event - but one participant (one skater - ad - one skier down the slope- ad).

would be curious to see that per 60 minutes, the ad and event times were approaching equal.

[crazylikafox]

4. Agreed. It was mostly commercials. Not enough sports to hold my attention.

[Retrograde]

5. No, it was more like this (at least in prime time)

Ad, heart-warming profile, ad, event, ad, talking heads, ad, heart-burning profile, ad, event, ad, recap of yesterday's events, ad nauseam.

The daytime stuff wasn't bad (although there was a LOT of cross-country skiing). I watch with a finger on the FF button.

[Initech]

10. Actually it was more like:

Event

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Some random highlights of other events

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Some random backstory of some random US team member that drags on for over two hours

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1/2 of 1/3 of one event, followed by another 1/2 of 1/3 of the next event

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Another random back story that has nothing to do with anything that maybe is vaguely involved with the Olympics or Russia

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News

Olympics coverage resumes in three hours.

Repeat.

[NRaleighLiberal]

11. yep...agreed. super annoying.

[Gothmog]

3. Due to Putin, I did my best to ignore these games

I was turned off by Putin and never got into these games. Even curling was not interesting to me

[former9thward]

6. The time zone caused the rating drop.

Vancouver is in the same general time zones of the U.S. so it was easy to watch sports live as most people want to do. Sochi meant that most people could not watch live games so alot of people caught the scores elsewhere or watched it on other sources like the internet.

[Blue_Tires]

8. +1

[loli phabay]

15. good point.

[frazzled]

7. I think largely a time-zone issue

You already knew the results of the competitions well before the yawningly bad, manipulated prime-time coverage.

I didn't watch it at all until the last few days, when we discovered we got NBCSN, which was broadcasting live. I watched the women's singles figure skating, both short and long programs. It's way more interesting to be able to see a bunch of the "bottom" skaters in the pack, to be able to understand appreciate the top-level skaters. In prime-time, they only show the top 7 or 8.

In addition, they--weirdly--had different commentators for the live daytime and tape-delayed nighttime skating events. In the day, Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir were terrific (with Terry Gannon). At night, Scott Hamilton, Sandra Bezic (and Tom Hammond) were a total bore.

In the end, though, it's also a question of "who cares": is anyone really that interested in watching people sliding down icy tracks on their stomachs? Not me.

[northoftheborder]

9. An odd realization about this Olympics....

....I did not see ONE medal ceremony. I watched off and on during the daytime, depending upon what event was taking place, watched a lot of the night summaries and repeats, but not all. I watched more figure skating than any thing. I saw the presentation of flowers for one of those events, when they said the medals would be awarded later. Saw some still shots of several. Just strange that I didn't accidentally see at least one medal ceremony. When were they?

[NRaleighLiberal]

13. my wife and I noticed that - seems like prior olympics really focused on them. this one? nada.

[pothos]

17. with a slight few exceptions all the medal ceremonies took place away from the event

i don't know why, but there was a central location at the olympic village where the ceremonies took place. at the events they had "flower ceremonies" where the winning athletes were given flowers but their anthem wasn't played. the only exception i can think of off the top of my head is hockey. curling might have had medals given away at the arena too.

edit to add: i have no idea why they didn't film some of the actual ceremonies at the village for airing later.

[murielm99]

12. There were too many background stories and not enough

actual competitions shown. And I no longer care about Nancy and Tonya. If they want ratings, they need to do a better job.

To be fair, not all of it is their fault. Yes, time zones did make a difference. But with the Internet and some of the news programs, it is hard for some people to avoid spoilers. That takes a lot of fun out of watching the competitions, IMHO.

[Politicalboi]

14. Okay, I'll do my part and watch tonight

Oh damn, I missed them.

[Tarheel_Dem]

16. The location turned me off.

[Jenoch]

18. Do you know why thousands of athletes

from all over the world gather every four years to compete in the Olympic Games? It's so they don't have to watch it on television.

[Jamaal510]

19. The Olympics is boring, anyway,

especially the winter games. At least the Summer games did have variety in the type of sports, but the Sochi Olympics was all ice sports. Even if the Olympics had been played somewhere else, I still wouldn't have been interested much in watching.

[Initech]

20. I like watching the Olympics, if they'd show the actual events!

What I hate is the 3+ hours of bullshit minutia that they show in between the actual events. They showed the life story of someone on the US Ski team (not Bode Miller) that just dragged on for at least more than an hour and a half. Talk about too much detail.

[gerogie2]

21. Most likely due to lack of live coverage.

People can get the results before the sporting event is shown on TV.

[SoCalDem]

22. I actually loved the broadcasting schedule

But then I am a night owl.. I watched a LOT of this olympics.. The best part was the lack of constant yapping from Bob Costas..


Most folks have DVRs these days, so I just recorded everything and scanned through the stuff I didn't want..

This olympics' coverage of figure skating was great..