Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony Viewership Falls Hard From 2018 Kick-Off In Early Numbers
deadline.comIt’s early days at the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, but NBC must already be praying for some Gold medal glory or the Super Bowl to give them a boost.
Right now, coming off record low viewership in the first night of primetime coverage, the billions the Comcast-owned network fork out to broadcast the Games until 2032 isn’t looking like money well spent.Exhibit A: the 2022 Opening Ceremony.A paltry 8.7 million tuned in on NBC in primetime see the pre-taped Mike Tirico and Savannah Guthrie-led coverage of the propaganda-heavy spectacle put on by Chinese President Xi Jinping and filmmaker Zhang Yimou.
Put in the starkest terms, those early numbers are down harder and faster from four years ago in PyeongChang than Mikaela Shiffrin on a slalom run.A crashing 69% in the fast affiliates to be specific.In a case of snowboarders to skateboarders, the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics slid 16% from the preliminary data of last year’s Opening Ceremony of the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Right now, that adds up to an all-time Olympics low for NBC.Now, like South Korea’s hosting of the XXIII Winter Olympics and Japan’s Covid-19 hobbled effort in 2021, China’s second Olympics in 14 years is many time zones off Stateside primetime on both coasts.
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