Ivanka Trump arrived in South Korea on Friday as she takes on diplomatic duties at the Winter Olympics…
But .. not even she could help a struggling network retain viewers for its shrinking Olympics..
It ain’t 1994 anymore..
For the last Friday of the often-struggling PyeongChang Games, NBC and NBCSN’s combined primetime coverage grabbed a 9.2/16 in metered market results
That is an all-time low for an Olympics that is on track to be the lowest ever.
Down 11% in the early numbers from the previous ratings bottoming out of the 2018 Games on February 17, last night’s alpine skiing, snowboarding speed skating and bobsledding filled coverage is also down 2% from the last Friday of the Sochi Games in 2014. Unlike last night’s primetime, the coverage out of Russia on February 21, 2014 was tape-delayed and only on NBC itself. Like last night’s primetime, the final Friday of the XXII Winter Games proved to be a ratings low at the time too.
When the final viewership numbers were in, the final Friday of Sochi 2014 drew an audience of 14.9 million. To go a bit bigger picture, that was down from comparable nights of Vancouver 2010 and Torino 2006. Which, as we await final numbers for last night and based on the metered market results, paints a chilly portrait of the Winter Games out PyeongChang going for a new low.
Even with Team USA currently in fourth place overall in the XXIII Winter Games, there are a lot of double-digit drops once you drill into the numbers.
And remember: In 2011, NBC paid a total of $4.38 billion for the rights to the next four Olympics. Three years later it bought another six for $7.7 billion. At the time, the deals looked to many like a sure thing.
Just as the net news cycle completely decimated the NETWORKS (until Trump along) could the internet also have killed the way we follow the Olympics? Is the attention span of the world at large so short that we cannot even stomach a brief 1 hour of our time to take us away from the slums of social networks?
IT WOULD APPEAR TO.
And with that said, it would also appear that NBC’s notion it could score high joy with a big purchase like they made in ’11 look not only like a bad risk but a huge albatross that will be around their Peacock neck for the next several Olympics to come…
…..unless another Kerrigan/Harding scandal rears its figure skating head, the winter and summer games mania could very well be a thing of the past…
….as things change.