Winter Olympics End With Smallest Audience Ever

[left-of-center2012]

The 2022 Winter Olympics ended as the least watched ever for NBCUniversal ...

The topline figure is that the Olympics averaged 11.4 million viewers across all of NBCU’s platforms in primetime. That’s down 42 percent from the 19.8 million average for the 2018 winter games in Pyeongchang, South Korea — in keeping with the trend both from the first few days of the games ... and the general decline of broadcast network ratings in the past four years.

NBCU’s coverage from Beijing is also down about 26 percent from the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which averaged 15.5 million primetime viewers in the company’s “Total Audience Delivery” metric (a combination of Nielsen ratings for TV and Adobe Analytics figures for digital platforms). That too is on par with the declines from last summer from the opening week of the winter games. (Each of the last three Olympics, for what it’s worth, took place in eastern Asia, presenting similar time zone differences between the host cities and the United States.)

NBCUniversal also said that the Olympics generated nearly 20 billion ad impressions for adults, according to metrics from the company’s measurement partner iSpot, more than three times as many impressions per unit over the course of the games than ABC, CBS and Fox combined.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/winter-olympics-ratings-smallest-ever-1235097103/

[Effete Snob]

1. "more than three times as many impressions per unit"

They've made it pretty much unwatchable.

There were a couple of events I would like to have seen, but it just wasn't worth the time investment in commercials.

For example, the women's downhill skiing competition was delayed by bad weather, but the Peacock replay kept the time delay, while requiring two to three minutes of commercials every couple of minutes - to watch (or skip through) a time delay. I gave up.

[Auggie]

2. IMO the best way to watch is via delayed streaming, VOD, and DVR ...

NBC should try a primetime "highlights" approach and cut the special interest features and talking head pundits. Quickest way to lose me in primetime is a lengthy participant's backstory. I'm just not interested.

[JT45242]

3. too many X games and BS 'first to ..." for sports that have been in the Olympics for a short time

They added a ton of X games sports to try to entice people in ... did not work to draw in viewers.

They keep saying the first to do X and Y -- if an event is only in its third or fourth olympics, of course this will be the first person to win three or four medals in that sport.

They keep adding more and more events and then say -- this person won more medals than anyone before. Eric heiden won ALL FIVE (the only five speed skating medals in one Olympics). No relays, no mixed gender relays, no extra races. So don't tell me how someone who got all thode extra races and relays is better.

The NHL stayed away from the hockey -- Olympic hockey with pros and not college students is some of the best hockey that you will ever see. No fights, national pride,best players in the world. It was interesting to watch a bunch of college players and people who play in overseas leagues, but the best in the world now play in the NHL (not like the cold war era).

Women's hockey has TWO great teams -- so the two matches between the US and Canada were great. BUt the rest not so much.

And .... the elephant in the room. The ROC -- cheaters of epic proportions -- allowed to compete at all. Given special accomodations to let cheaters compete.

And the second elephant in the room ... why are two of the most evil governments in the world (Russia and China) allowed to host at all. The token muslim Uighur has already likely been disappeared along with his family.

Did not help themselves during bobsledding -- especially during monobob -- by saying that the big teams have all the money and the best sleds. They basically told us that whichever team had the most money would win regardless of the skills of the bobsledders, except for the monobob races which are apparently like an IROC race with identical sleds. If it is all about the national government buying the best sleds and other equipment, why lie and say that it is about athletic excellence.


We DVRed a lot ... deleted most and watched some things that were interesting.

The winter olympics really needs a good pruning -- eliminate a lot of fluff and get money for equipment and bribes out of it.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. For Chinese leaders, Olympics weren't 2022′s big-ticket item

BEIJING (AP) — The just-concluded Winter Olympics weren’t China’s big event of the year — internally, at least. For the Communist Party, that comes this fall at a major meeting that will likely cement Xi Jinping ’s position as one of the nation’s most powerful leaders in its seven decades of Communist rule.

The party congress, held every five years, is expected to appoint Xi to a third five-year term as its leader, breaking with recent past practice that limited the top person to 10 years in power. That would pave the way for him to get a third term as China’s president at the following year’s annual meeting of the legislature.

For China’s 1.4 billion people and the rest of the world, Xi’s tightening grip on power signals at least a partial return to the cult of personality that characterized the rule of Mao Zedong, who led Communist China from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1976, and that the party had moved away from after the disaster of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

“The 20th Party Congress will be extremely important even though and maybe because there will be no leadership change,” said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Xi Jinping will likely lay out his priority agenda, which will provide insights into the legacy items he hopes to achieve.”

https://apnews.com/article/winter-olympics-sports-beijing-legislature-mao-zedong-bf3630017349478029d8d9ddfafa03c1

[Xavier Breath]

5. I certainly did my share.

I watched in primetime as well as late-night live events and replays throughout the day. I miss it now that it's over.