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for NBC's Olympics
Ratings up 18% over Nagano, with 18-34s up 28%
By Kevin Downey
The 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City may be over but they’ll easily live on as the Games by which all future winter Olympics are compared.
NBC handily beat CBS’s coverage of the 1998 Nagano Games with a 19.2 household rating, an 18 percent increase.
Moreover, in doing so it exceeded by 13 percent the 16.9 rating it reportedly guaranteed advertisers.
It also exceeded projections for ad revenue by $20 million, topping $740 million and giving the network a profit of $75.
An estimated 184 million people watched at least part of NBC’s 17-day coverage, with about 84 percent of U.S. homes tuning in over the period.
Achieving perhaps its toughest goal, NBC drove up its rating for the 18-34 demographic by 28 percent.
It did so through a variety of marketing pitches and programming innovations, with greater coverage of the so-called speed sports that younger viewers are attracted to.
"It's the most difficult audience in television, and it doesn't matter what it is," Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC sports and Olympics, told reporters on Sunday.
"We're very satisfied with the inroads that we made, particularly living in the environment we do today where just in television alone the average home has 80 choices as opposed to 20 when we began the 1990s."
While NBC will have the challenge of matching its rating for the 2002 Games when the Torino winter Olympics roll around in 2006, its bigger challenge may very well be exceeding its record $740 million in advertising revenue for the Salt Lake City Games.
NBC paid $545 million for rights to the 2002 Olympics and has rights for all the Games through the 2008 summer events in Beijing.
NBC executives estimated just days before the Games kicked off that the network would pull in about $720 million. That in itself would be a record for an Olympics held in the U.S.
But NBC was able to sell an additional $20 million in commercial time even as the events were unfolding.
A record-high rating for the Olympics opening ceremonies, along with controversy surrounding the pairs’ figure skating that resulted in gold medals being awarded to both the Russian and Canadian teams, pumped up interest.
"I said at the outset that the Salt Lake City winter Games in primetime would be the equivalent of seven Super Bowls," said Randy Falco, president of NBC Television Network and chief operating officer of the NBC Olympics.
"As it actually turns out, it's more like eight Super Bowls."
Although ratings for NBC’s coverage of the Olympics were impressive--including a 25.5 for the opening ceremonies on Feb. 8 and a 26.8 rating for the night of women’s figure skating on Thursday--they only reflect part of the success that NBC had with the Games.
NBC won every hour of primetime during its Olympic coverage, but its ratings were spread out to other networks and other dayparts as well.
Both of NBC’s cable news networks had dramatic ratings increases.
CNBC averaged a 1 rating, which is three times its average. MSNBC, while criticized for delaying its coverage of the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, had a rating of 1.1, which is about four times its average.
NBC’s "Today" increased its lead over ABC’s "Good Morning America" by 50 percent, according to NBC.
And local NBC affiliates got a ratings bump as well.
"The head of our owned-and-operated group has told me that they are up about 40 percent in their late local news from the lead-ins that they have gotten from the Olympics," said Falco.
Although statistics from the Salt Lake City Games are still coming in, the only question that may linger is why NBC did so well.
It’s a question that may never be fully answered, but a lot of factors contributed to it.
Most media buyers and analysts had expected ratings to be better than those for the Nagano Olympics simply because the Games were played in the U.S. and because patriotism has been on the rise since the tragedies of Sept. 11.
And controversy, like the pairs’ figure skating scandal and Sarah Hughes’s gold-medal upset over Michelle Kwan in women’s figure skating, typically bumps up interest.
Viewer interest also goes up when Americans win medals. This year’s 34 medals, second only to Germany's, was a record for the U.S.
But at least part of the reason for NBC’s big ratings and record revenue goes back to the way the network handled the Games.
NBC tried to speed up the action with fewer personal stories, more new sports like skeleton, and only three-and-a-half hours of primetime coverage, compared to five hours during the 2000 summer Olympics in Sydney.
Moreover, NBC’s success can be traced back in part to its eight months of promotions for the Games, which kicked off during last year’s NBA Finals.
"I think the awareness going into these Games was the highest that I've ever seen," said Ebersol.
"All of our research in the fall and again in mid-January showed that 80 percent or more of the people in the country, including 78 percent of the young adults, would significantly watch the Games."
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2002 SALT LAKE CITY WINTER OLYMPICS |
||||||||
| Year |
House- |
T12- |
A18- |
A25 |
A35 |
A50+ |
A18- |
A18- |
| 1992 |
18.7 |
6.6 |
6.2 |
11.2 |
14.8 |
18.6 |
9.3 |
11.8 |
| 1994 |
27.8 |
9.4 |
8.6 |
16.8 |
19.7 |
29.2 |
13.7 |
16.5 |
| 1998 |
16.3 |
4.9 |
3.5 |
8.2 |
11.4 |
16.4 |
6.4 |
8.9 |
| 2002 |
19.2 |
5.7 |
5.0 |
n/a |
14.0 |
18.6 |
8.2 |
11.1 |
| % Chg (2002 vs. 1998) |
18% |
16% |
43% |
n/a |
23% |
13% |
28% |
25% |
|
Source: Magna Global USA, based on
data from Nielsen Media Research |
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2002 SALT LAKE CITY WINTER
OLYMPICS Night-by-Night Ratings |
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| Day |
House- |
T12- |
A18- |
A25- |
A35- |
A50+ |
A18- |
A18- |
| 1 |
25.5 |
7.8 |
6.9 |
14.0 |
19.4 |
26.2 |
11.2 |
15.4 |
| 2 |
17.1 |
5.1 |
4.5 |
8.3 |
12.6 |
17.5 |
6.8 |
9.8 |
| 3 |
17.6 |
6.2 |
5.5 |
9.9 |
13.8 |
16.5 |
8.2 |
11.0 |
| 4 |
19.6 |
5.8 |
4.5 |
10.6 |
14.0 |
18.3 |
8.1 |
11.1 |
| 5 |
18.5 |
5.8 |
4.6 |
9.8 |
12.7 |
17.3 |
7.7 |
10.3 |
| 6 |
17.5 |
4.4 |
4.9 |
10.2 |
12.6 |
15.5 |
8.0 |
10.4 |
| 7 |
17.6 |
5.2 |
3.8 |
8.5 |
12.7 |
16.8 |
6.6 |
9.7 |
| 8 |
15.8 |
4.1 |
3.0 |
7.4 |
11.3 |
16.4 |
5.7 |
8.5 |
| 9 |
14.0 |
4.6 |
4.2 |
8.6 |
10.6 |
13.2 |
6.8 |
8.8 |
| 10 |
17.1 |
4.8 |
4.1 |
7.9 |
12.0 |
17.8 |
6.4 |
9.3 |
| 11 |
17.1 |
4.7 |
3.2 |
8.5 |
11.4 |
16.4 |
6.4 |
8.9 |
| 12 |
22.3 |
6.2 |
6.1 |
14.3 |
16.0 |
20.2 |
11.0 |
13.5 |
| 13 |
19.5 |
5.7 |
5.4 |
10.9 |
14.6 |
18.0 |
8.7 |
11.7 |
| 14 |
26.8 |
7.3 |
7.8 |
15.4 |
19.3 |
24.7 |
12.3 |
15.9 |
| 15 |
17.7 |
4.0 |
3.5 |
* |
12.8 |
18.4 |
6.0 |
9.5 |
| 16 |
15.7 |
5.1 |
3.9 |
* |
11.7 |
15.6 |
6.6 |
9.2 |
| 17 |
22.3 |
8.2 |
5.5 |
* |
16.8 |
22.8 |
9.2 |
13.1 |
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Source: Magna Global USA, based on
data from Nielsen Media Research |
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February 26, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.
