Quelle surprise. NBCUniversal has yet another summer blockbuster to strut about. And this one doesn’t even require anyone to get off their couch–although, given the recent temperature break, you certainly could–or should.
As THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Rick Porter crowed yesterday afternoon:
The opening weekend of the 2024 Olympics has NBCUniversal saying “Vive la France.”
Through the first three full days of the games, NBCU is averaging 34.5 million viewers across all of its linear networks and digital platforms for its primary telecasts. The ratings figures include both what it calls “Paris Prime” – 2-5 p.m. ET in the United States, when a host of medal events air live – and the U.S. primetime telecasts…The 34.5 million viewer average over the first three days is up 79 percent (from 19.3 million viewers) over the same period for the last Summer Olympics three years ago in Tokyo.
Even more impressively, the trend line is actually upticking over the opening ceremonies, a pattern seldom seen in these times. Again per Porter:
After drawing 28.6 million viewers for Friday’s opening ceremony, the weekend telecasts got even bigger: Saturday’s total audience was 32.4 million, and on Sunday – which featured the first day of competition in the marquee women’s gymnastics event – 41.5 million people tuned in, according to custom fast national ratings from Nielsen (for linear broadcasts) and Adobe Analytics (for streaming and digital).
For NBCU honcho Mark Lazarus, who oversaw those Tokyo games when he was merely head of NBC Sports, this is pure serendipity. Rarely in his career has his last name so accurately described the level of rise from the level of depth they were in.
And, perhaps just as importantly, a rare chance for him to give a most deserved raspberry to pollsters who predicted anything but this. And this was no mere fly-by-night, el cheapo surveyer, but an esteemed brand whose findings were deemed important enough for the likes of THE ASSOCIATED PRESS to deliver classic clickbait on the eve of those opening ceremonies last Thursday:
On the heels of low ratings for the coronavirus pandemic-marred Tokyo and Beijing Olympics, Paris may not do much better among U.S. viewers, a poll from Gallup released Thursday found… (A)ccording to the poll, 30% of respondents said they will not watch any of the Games, 34% said they will not watch much and 35% said they would watch at least a fair amount. That last figure is down from the 48% measured before the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Gallup did not measure viewing intentions for the Tokyo Olympics, which were delayed a year…The network did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment on the poll.
Quite tactful on their part. Because for a company as auspiced and theoretically detail-oriented as Gallup, they seemed to have missed this one by several country miles. 206, to be specific–the number that have at least one athlete in Paris for these games.
Qualitative research is it itself risky without proper guardrails and planning. Sight unseen, I’d immediately wonder what questions they are asked, the choices they are given and how representative the sample was. When I see response that seem to indicate a ternary choice for a question that would likely have been better answered with a scale, that’s a red flag that the rest of this poll may not have been quite as granular as needed to attempt to answer some very complicated questions with some extremely high stakes.
And given the specific issues at hand that most concerned the parties directly invested, I would have gotten some sort of handle of what kind of viewing options they had at their disposal, and, for that matter, how they defined viewing. Not only on what channel, but on what platforms. And I don’t just mean Peacock.
An insightful piece from FAST COMPANY’s Paul Mueller that dropped over the weekend pointed out some clear lapses in what most observers have used as the demoninator:
The pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics saw live television and internet viewership drop to 3.05 billion people worldwide, a 5% decrease from Rio 2016 and a 15% drop from London 2012. Not good. But while those numbers don’t lie, they can certainly mislead. And some additional context paints a picture not of extinction, but of evolution.
While traditional TV viewership declined, digital engagement soared. Tokyo Olympics highlights and digital clips racked up 28 billion online views. For context, that’s more than double Rio’s 11.6 billion and worlds beyond London’s 1.9 billion.
This seismic shift in consumption habits isn’t unique to the Olympics. It reflects broader trends across media and sports entertainment.
And it may be in those new and now more connected alternative engagements that could be contributing to the seismic spikes we are seeing so far. Think about what happens when you get an alert on your phone or device that a medal event or a team sport featuring the U.S. is about to start. You learn that Simone Biles is about to begin a set, for example. With a click or two, you can telescope to a live feed of it, to the Peacock platform if you’re mobile or to one of the many NBCU linear networks, including the two temporary ones that have augmented the usual suspects called Paris-1 and Paris-2 if you’re on a smart TV, and watch. And thanks to the skill sets of Adobe, which more accurately measures incidental viewing, your otherwise unplanned viewership now counts.
And yes, the first Olympiad in eight years to take place outside of APAC, and in front of actual cheering crowds for the first time in three, is a major boost. NBC tried to work around the 12-plus hour time differences by encouraging staging as many events as possible of consequence in morning time slots locally so as to have their air in East Coast prime time back in the States. But not every event was capable of being moved around like that, and let’s not forget that South Korea and China weren’t inclined to do all that many favors for their Western brethren. Key team sports events were almost always airing in the middle of the night. Now we get games at lunchtime, and just like in the old days when kids came in from lunch to watch JEOPARDY! we see spikes in usage and, again, a newfound ability for those spikes to become measurable. Someday soon Nielsen may catch up; at least that’s what they claim.
I’m sure that there will be post-mortem research conducted in the wake of this degree of success, most likely by NBC since they now know where the next five Olympiads will be taking place. Considering four of the five will take place in Europe and the United States, they actually can build upon even this level of positive moment. And were I with an entity that has seen similar declines as what NBC had seen, I’d sure like to know what they did right that I could potentially tap into. You hear that, U.S. Open and ESPN? Emmy Awards and ABC? Whatever political debates may be occurring, local or national, and anyone who may be airing them that actually wants a larger audience? Be aware that there are better options out there than Gallop, and if you need help finding them, there’s more than a number of us that are all too willing to point you in the right direction.
In my vast experience, the only thing more in need of research than underperforming content are ones that are wildly successful. Especially when the so-called experts never saw it coming.
Until next time…