Time Bandits? Report Says Athens Ratings Misrepresented

Report Questions Validity Of Olympic Ratings Gains

A Mediaedge:cia report has found that if the Nielsen ratings for NBC’s primetime coverage of the Athens Games are adjusted for its broadcast starting at 8:00pm ET versus 7:00pm ET for the Sydney Games, the gains “are far more modest and that in some demographics viewing was actually down,” according to Toni Fitzgerald of MEDIA LIFE. With the first hour removed, Athens “saw only a 3[%] gain in household ratings, not the 9[%] that NBC has been trumpeting,” since the first hour for Sydney “typically saw light viewing.” After the adjustment, coverage from Athens earned an 8.7 for the 18-49 demo and a 9.9 for the 25-54 demo, compared to an 8.9 and 10.2, respectively, for Sydney. The analysis shows an adjusted household ratings average of a 14.6 for Sydney, compared to an unadjusted 13.8, thus “cutting Athens’ gains by more than half.” Mediaedge:cia Dir of Research & Marketplace Analysis Lyle Schwartz said the average ratings gain for Athens “isn’t because people were more interested; it’s because the lower-rated time periods are excluded. ... What clued us in at first was looking at the opening ceremonies, and we saw it was down substantially from previous years. Then you see the numbers grow (for the competition period), so we wanted to take a look deeper at the numbers and see why” (MEDIALIFE.com, 10/6). SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL’s Andy Bernstein notes another variable that “threw off the comparison” is that NBC did not start airing national ads until 8:30pm ET, and Nielsen “only rates time periods in which national commercials air.” The network began the practice during the Salt Lake Games (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 10/4 issue).