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young to Olympics
Expect edgier coverage and more speed sports
By Carl Bialik
Think of the winter Olympic Games on NBC and you think of figure skating, U.S. flag waving and cozy bios of the athletes.
This is no mistake. Sure, the Games also boast lightning-fast skiers and sledders and plenty of hockey action, but NBC's Olympic formula has always been to appeal to older viewers and female viewers with a broadcasting approach unique in sports TV.
The network has stuck with the formula because it largely works. The Olympics remains a dominant force in sports television, and it is now especially critical for NBC as its only remaining sport following the recent loss of the NBA to a group comprised of ABC, ESPN and AOL Time Warner.
"Just to give you a little perspective on what the Olympic Games really mean to a network like NBC, these Olympic Games will be among the top 10 most-watched TV events in history among total viewers," NBC president Randy Falco told reporters in a press briefing last week.
"The Olympics means that NBC will dominate primetime over its 17 days. We’ll win every day of primetime and we’ll probably win every hour, which is pretty extraordinary."
Yet NBC plans to tinker with its winning Olympic formula this time around because of one simple fact: Its audience is graying.
"We've seen the ratings among the younger demographic waning quite a bit lately, which certainly does not bode well for the future of the Olympics," says Shawn Bradley, vice president and chief operating officer of the Bonham Group Market Research Company.
"They need to turn around that trend of waning interest, or else they'll run into real problems in the future."
On the surface, there are many reasons for NBC to be excited about this year's Games. They are being held in Salt Lake City, which will allow for much live coverage in a period of heightened patriotism.
However, there is a nemesis on the horizon in Aspen, Colo., an upstart nipping at the Olympics' heels. It is the Winter X Games.
The viewership for the made-for-ESPN, extreme-sports extravaganza has grown consistently since its inception in 1997, and this year's Games were broadcast on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 from Feb. 1 to 5, ending just three days before the Olympics begins.
While the audience for the Winter X Games remains small, Sunday's ESPN broadcast set a record for winter Games ratings and audience size on that network. Monday's ESPN2 airing attracted the most viewers and the second-highest ratings for an ESPN2 Winter X Games broadcast.
"The message of the Winter X Games is that the traditional Olympics is not exciting enough for young people," says Lynn Kahle, professor of marketing at the University of Oregon. "Chances are it will hurt the main Olympics somewhat."
That seems to be ESPN's intention. Kahle recalls listening to ESPN Radio on Wednesday night and hearing a half-hour show "where essentially they were saying how boring and unfun the Olympics was to watch."
Kahle says the question on the show was what Olympic event was viewers' favorite thing to watch, if anything.
"One caller called in and said his favorite part was the closing ceremonies," Kahle says. "The on-air personalities ran with that."
NBC, feeling the heat, is responding.
First, it hopes to benefit from the Olympic Games' new speed sports. Skeleton, a speed freak's dream of on-the-belly sledding, returns to these Games after a 54-year hiatus.
Women will race in bobsleds for the first time.
Snowboarding, the only sport that the Olympics and the Winter X Games share, was added in 1998. And freestyle skiing, which was added in stages in the early '90s, is a hipper, freer version of more traditional skiing and ski-jump events.
But all these events will have no impact on NBC's appeal to the younger demographic if they're pushed off the air by figure skating and biopic pieces, as has happened in the past. This year, the plans include those features but also give the speed sports more air time.
Having its cable networks, CNBC and MSNBC, onboard will help. Between the cable stations and the broadcast network, NBC will air 375 1/2 hours of these Games, a new record.
Showing the youth-oriented sports on its cable networks is in line with the Winter X Games, which are broadcast primarily on cable.
However, NBC won't just relegate these sports to cable. Snowboard will have nine separate primetime airings; skeleton, four; bobsled, six; and freestyle, seven.
Furthermore, NBC plans to change its broadcast style to match the speed and energy of these sports.
"They'll make it faster, edgier, with more live-action while diminishing the sappy profiles that have been the mainstay in the past," Bradley says.
Part of this approach is new technological features that will enliven the Games and emphasize events' speed. For speed skating, time intervals will be flashed between skaters. Viewers will see freestyle aerial skiers' hang time. And radar guns at eight spots on the slopes for the "sliding sports"--bobsled, luge, and skeleton--will show viewers just how fast those guys are sliding.
The edgier, younger tone seems to clash with the expected U.S. flag waving and general patriotic spirit. But Bradley thinks NBC will avoid overt references to Sept. 11, and not only because of the desire for younger viewers.
"I think that NBC will try to stay away from overly playing on the heartstrings of viewers," he says. "Some people in some instances are having a backlash against it."
He pointed out that this year's Super Bowl ads for the most part avoided serious topics and Sept. 11 references.
NBC feels good about hitting a wide demographic with the Games. Falco said in the press briefing that the network has surveyed viewers about their intent to view, and 80 to 90 percent say they'll watch at least part.
"The best news for us is that 18- to 34-year-olds, the younger demographic, actually tell us the same thing as the older viewers," Falco said. "So that’s a terrific story for us."
To keep that story rosy, NBC will have to be careful not to pander too much to the youth movement.
"It's always a tradeoff," Kahle says. "There are certain things you can do that will help with one audience but hurt with another. I wouldn't advise them to cut out events like figure skating, for example."
February 8, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Carl Bialik is a New York writer and a contributor to Media Life.
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