Menu
Media

NBC Sports Network Scores With Olympics, Now Seeks Way To Sustain Audience

NBC Sports Network "has been a blip in a universe dominated by ESPN," but during the London Games it was "temporarily transformed," according to Richard Sandomir of the N.Y. TIMES. The net's viewership "swelled sixfold, to 977,000 a day," marking an audience equivalent to the "one CNN gets on election nights." NBC Sports Group President Jon Miller said, "This has exceeded all our predictions." But, Sandomir writes, until the '14 Sochi Games, the net "returns to reality, meaning a regular schedule that has experienced reduced prime-time viewership" in '12 compared to last year. Most of the net's "new additions are studio shows and not the live-action sports that NBC Sports Network so desperately needs." There are also "no defining personalities among the channel's regular hosts and game announcers." NBC Sports Group Chair Mark Lazarus said, "We all know this is a five-year plan to make it a bigger sports network. No one here believes, 'You did the Olympics, now we expect your ratings to go up 20 percent.' I'm hoping we get more people to sample the network" (N.Y. TIMES, 8/16). 

STREAM-LINED: The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Miriam Gottfried writes for NBC, "a more remarkable feat" than the net's ratings "may have been its apparent success" with live streaming the London Games. NBC Sports indicated that pay-TV customers "registered 9.9 million devices on NBCOlympics.com or on the NBCOlympics Live Extra app for mobile devices -- believed to be the most ever for a single, 'TV Everywhere' event." NBC's experience also "demonstrated the rising importance of online streaming to paying cable subscribers as a way of retaining customers in the face of so-called cord cutting." While streaming content across digital devices to paying cable subscribers "isn't an antidote to cord-cutting," NBC's Olympics experience "shows networks may have ways to manage the transition away from traditional TV viewing" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 8/16).

NEIGHBORS TO THE NORTH: The GLOBE & MAIL's Bruce Dowbiggin writes, "Canadians couldn’t get enough of the Olympic coverage live and on tape via the TV consortium of Bell and Rogers." The Consortium indicated that "viewership was up" 88% over the '08 Beijing Games. TV viewership in Canada increased 13% "during the Games versus the same days last year." The ratings "justify CTV’s gamble in borrowing the Games’ rights from CBC for four years." But it likely "still won’t turn the 2010/ 2012 Olympic package (bought for $153-million) into a financial winner." Had the Consortium’s "healthy digital numbers produced similarly healthy revenues, they might have broken even" (GLOBE & MAIL, 8/16).

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2012/08/16/Media/Oly-Media.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2012/08/16/Media/Oly-Media.aspx

CLOSE