American Olympics Viewing Ratings Waaaaaaay Down

I generally love the Olympics and enjoy watching a wide variety of events, but I'm not watching like I used to. For a couple reasons

1. I'm at work when a lot of events happen. I might watch the replays of some, but missing the actual live final of something kills my enthusiasm for watching it a lot of the time. A few events are still worth it to go back and watch the whole thing, but far from the majority.

2. Social media, youtube, 24 hour news, the internet, etc. (media, media, media). I find that for a lot of the Olympics, I'll watch scores on-line, read recaps and discussion about the event, watch highlights, fast forward through the replay, and just generally put together my own custom, piecemeal coverage instead of watching the actual broadcast.

3. I loathe NBC broadcast coverage - prepackaged scripts, always tossing it back to the main host, cut up competitions, a zillion commercials, narrow focus, banal, forumlaic personal interest stories we've seen a billion times ("this athlete had a baby and is still competing, isn't that amazing. Did we mention she's a mother now"; this athlete grew up poor and made it to the Olympics; this athlete is trying to make a comeback after injury, doubt, retirement). Ugh. I hate it.

4. It's summer. I have a desk job where I sit all day. After work I want to be out and about and active, not on my couch.

D-nice in the house! 'sup bro?

Too many crappy sports (e.g. Archery, table tennis)

Boring medal ceremonies

Horses

100s of races with silly swim strokes

Too few hotties

Everyone's on dope

SpotYou wrote:

D-nice in the house! 'sup bro?

Chillin'

Why the eff have they dedicated an entire channel to Tennis?

Bob Costas needs to retire.

Just show the events and shut your yappers!

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

30% fewer viewers than London. No surprise there.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-olympic-competition-opens-917873

The number of unique viewers using the Internet to watch has only risen 7% since the London cycle.

IOC viewership numbers being beat by e-sports content.

http://www.internetphenomena.com/2016/08/rio-2016-twitch-wins-sports-streaming-gold-olympics-win-silver/

nbc is stupid thinking people will huddle around the tv for a pre-packaged primetime olympics show. world doesnt work like that anymore.

I'm guessing this has more to do with US TV networks than the popularity of the Olympics

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-nbcs-plan-to-show-olympics-on-time-delay-backfires-as-viewing-figures-nosedive-a7177371.html

I have not watched any of the Olympics because the governing bodies across most sports have not been serious at all about tackling doping. In some cases (e.g. track and field) they seem to be implicitly encouraging doping. I cannot be motivated to watch a competition when I do not know which competitors are following the rules. Jama Aden's group competing at the games is a joke. The only way to get the message across to IOC and Olympic sports is to stop following them and then maybe they will do something when sponsors notice the reduced public interest.

IOC Reform Committee wrote:

Too many crappy sports (e.g. Archery, table tennis)

Boring medal ceremonies

Horses

100s of races with silly swim strokes

Too few hotties

Everyone's on dope

All of those things were present in previous Olympics.

NBC is basically using the same corny formula they've used for the last 50 years and everyone is tired of it. The sports aren't shown for what they are but instead little fairy tales of American virtue.

The gymnasts aren't pro athletes whose entire life fortunes ride on this one shot at Olympic glory. Nope, they are just a group of best girl friends from Jr. High banded together to try and win the gold for their school and their dear surrogate-mother Márta Károlyi,- who is not a task master at all- just to earn one of those signature Karolyi bear hugs.

The swimmers are just trying to make their moms and dads proud. If I see one more shot of Michael Phelp's mom in the stands, I'm going to scream. Is the guy 31 or 14? When they televise a baseball game they don't continually show A-Rod or Big Papi's mom in the stand looking apprehensive.

And the Gold medal ceremony has been exhausted. It seems like it's the thousandth time they've done it this Olympics. Talk about beating a dead horse

It doesn't help at all that the Rio website sucks and you can't find anything.

It's all the backwards skipping in the pool...

This.

How hard is an ESPN Sportscenter like frame where the left hand side tells you what NBC family channel has what sport on it?

Let's say someone loves swimming. Why not have a channel dedicated to it? NBC can show the fluff human interest stories and any swimming event featuring US swimmers...The die-hards get to watch ALL heats, regardless of "star power" on the one channel and the casual fan watches NBC. Basically NBC becomes a "highlight" broadcast.

I'd love to be watching more but I don't have cable. This leaves me with only the on-air NBC broadcast, which is terrible.

I'd be completely happy to pay NBC (or whoever gets the contract) to be able to stream video from their website, but there is no mechanism for this.

I used to be able to watch BBC sport (which is much better than NBC) by spoofing a UK ISP, but now the BBC wants a viewer ID, which obviously I don't have. I'd be happy to pay them for access, too, but there is no mechanism.

Meanwhile, I'll get results off twitter and letsrun, and then watch highlights on youtube as they become available.

Over the air match-up tonight pre season NFL vrs Costas and his gang.

No excuses. If you care about the sport or the athlete; you do the modern thing. Get NBC Sport's App, and watch it on a phone or tablet from your desk.

And you don't need to be an irritated viewer at NBC's coverage. Much of their coverage is great. The experienced commentators for Gymnastics and Swimming are more the good. They're very good.

Smart people just ignore the rest. tune it out. So you have to tune out a 3 minute "up close and personal," once and a while.

If you are really disciplined you can TVO's things and watch them without knowing the results.

Don't let modern times ruin things for you, make modern times Work for you.

Viewer demographics have changed a lot since 2012; such as many of us don't have cable so we can't watch it even if we wanted to.

Why not have an internet package that we could buy instead of requiring a local provider? This is the least amount of Olympic coverage that I've seen since 1968.

And to whomever said that ping pong is boring has no soul.

Compared to their coverage of marathons, NBC's Olympic coverage could win an Emmy.

You fools are doing something wrong

They DO have an all swimming option

I have watched more of whatever I want at this Olympics live than I ever have

This is the best nbc has ever done (aside from the coverage actually on the mainnbc channel)

Track and Field hasn't started, dumb@ss.

No one watches a half-sport like swimming.