JAMAICA OBSERVER's Paul Rodgers noted Olympic TV company CVM has been ordered to "immediately" improve its coverage of the London Games. The Broadcasting Commission issued a notice of breach of license to CVM Tuesday, complaining of "poor to very poor" coverage. The commission said in a statement that the broadcaster is failing to provide service to a "number of areas." CVM CEO Al Edwards rejected criticism saying that they were "unjust and unfair." Edwards: "There's no entity in this country that can give you 100%, island-wide coverage." The commission instructed CVM to come up with a solution that "could include giving up its exclusive rights to the Games in some parts of the island." However, Edwards will not let go of his exclusivity easily. Edwards: We're not going to share those rights with any little Mickey Mouse cable operator" (JAMAICA OBSERVER, 8/1).
ANOTHER PLATFORM: In London, Lisa O'Carroll noted a European Broadcasting Union website that gives access to free and legal TV coverage of the Olympics by 40 broadcasters across Europe "is attracting millions of users a day." The Eurovision Sports website allows viewers to tune in to coverage by all major broadcasters across the continent. Viewers can also access the "raw, commentary-free feeds of 12 main sports a day." The special Olympics initiative involves the BBC along with all the public service broadcasters, which collectively purchased rights to the Games across Europe including RTE in Ireland, TF1 in France, ARD in Germany, TVP in Poland and the IBA in Israel. An EBU spokesperson said that the service is generating 2 million live streams a day, which compares to the 925,000 requests for views of the Opening Ceremony on the BBC iPlayer on Saturday (GUARDIAN, 8/1).
COULD NBC BREAK EVEN?: NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke today during a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss Comcast's Q2 earnings report said that NBC is “set to ‘break even’ on its Olympic coverage, rather than lose money as previously expected.” The company had “expected at one point to take a $200M loss on the London Olympics.” NBC paid $1.2B for the rights to air the Games in the U.S. and said that it “sold more than $1B in ads, breaking the record of $850 million set during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.” Burke: “We are way ahead of where we thought we’d be.” He added that because of “the timing of events in London, he had expected ratings to be down 20 percent compared with the Beijing Olympics.” They currently are up 10% (Peter Svensson, AP, 8/1). Burke said that the “high ratings the Olympics were drawing were ‘atypical’ in the current fragmented media environment, making them increasingly valuable.” He added that the strong ratings "were a result of the company’s promotion and its strategy of presenting the Games on broadcast, cable and digital” (BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 8/1).
