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very hot numbers
NBC's youth push may be paying off, and big-time
By Kevin Downey
There was every reason to believe that ratings for the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City would surpass those of recent Games and push NBC to an easy win in the February sweeps.
But few media researchers expected the Games to be among the most-watched in history.
That all changed on Friday.
Now it seems that the Salt Lake City winter Games may very well end up breaking viewership records, if not those for ratings.
"You do need to take into account that the population is different, so if you go by raw numbers, rather than ratings, it’s possible," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.
"I’ll bet that whatever ratings this Olympics gets, though, they won’t be matched by an Olympics for a good long time."
Early indications of big ratings came with Friday’s opening ceremonies on NBC.
The first day of coverage had a 25.5 household rating, based on preliminary data, making it the highest rated ever.
"I thought it would have done better than a 20, but I didn’t think it would do a 25," says Brad Adgate, senior vice president and corporate research director at Horizon Media.
"Friday is not a strong night for viewing, so I was a bit surprised. It became something of a Super Bowl type of event, which is nice to see."
The rating was 49 percent higher than the opening ceremony for the 1998 Games in Nagano and was even higher than the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, which until Friday had remained the highest rated in the history of winter Olympics.
Friday’s opening ceremony was watched by 72 million people, and fully 42 percent of homes watching television at that time tuned in.
Of course, a number of factors came into play that caused the ratings to surge, not the least of which was the increased patriotism that’s been in evidence everywhere since the tragedies of Sept. 11.
While national pride might lack the drama of the knee-whacking feud between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan that pushed ratings to record levels in 1994, most media researchers think it was the primary reason for Friday’s ratings.
Most say there were a number of other factors that came into play as well.
Among them was NBC’s heavy marketing push, which focused largely on the younger viewers who have been drifting away from the Games in recent years.
Although demographic ratings won’t be available until later today, it seems likely that viewing among young people has gone up. Moreover, with a number of events like snowboarding geared to people in the 18-34 age group, there’s a good chance that NBC will at least partially reverse the Olympics rating slide.
"There’s been more of an extreme sports element that’s been added to the Olympics, and NBC has been trying to tell viewers that," says Adgate.
"Viewers over 35 know what the Olympics are all about, but the 18- to 34-year-olds don’t watch a lot of television but are interested in certain sports."
Another factor that may have contributed to NBC’s rating, which was more than twice that of the other Big Four networks combined, was a lack of competition.
Although it’s difficult to say just how much that contributed to the rating, most media researchers say a weak lineup on ABC, CBS, and Fox didn’t hurt.
NBC’s primetime rating in the adult 18-49 demographic was a 15.4 on Friday, based on Nielsen overnight data, compared to ABC’s 2.2, CBS’s 2, and Fox’s 2.3.
"The other thing NBC had going for it, outside of going live, being in this country, and airing at a time of war, is that it seems that the other networks are pretty much rolling over and playing dead," says Thompson.
"If the other networks were putting blockbuster programming against it, they would still come in second place, but it would certainly eat away at those numbers."
Ratings for the Games themselves also got off to a strong start.
NBC’s household rating and share was 17.1/30 on Saturday, which is 39 percent higher than the second day of the winter Olympics in Nagano, according to NBC.
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WINTER OLYMPICS |
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Site |
Year |
Network |
Date |
Rating |
Share |
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Salt Lake City* |
2002 |
NBC |
Feb. 8 |
25.5 |
42 |
|
Nagano |
1998 |
CBS |
Feb. 7 |
17.1 |
29 |
|
Lillehammer |
1994 |
CBS |
Feb. 12 |
20.9 |
34 |
|
Albertville |
1992 |
CBS |
Feb. 8 |
14.5 |
24 |
|
Calgary |
1988 |
ABC |
Feb. 13 |
14.4 |
35 |
|
Sarajevo |
1984 |
ABC |
Feb. 8 |
17.2 |
27 |
|
Lake Placid |
1980 |
ABC |
Feb. 14 |
10.2 |
31 |
|
Innsbruck |
1976 |
ABC |
Feb. 4 |
23.2 |
37 |
|
Sapporo |
1972 |
NBC |
Feb. 2 |
19.1 |
33 |
|
Grenoble |
1968 |
ABC |
n/a |
2.9 |
20 |
|
Innsbruck |
1964 |
ABC |
n/a |
12.3 |
25 |
|
Squaw Valley |
1960 |
CBS |
n/a |
24.2 |
37 |
|
* Preliminary rating |
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February 12, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.
