NBC’s ‘Cataclysmic’ Olympics-Coverage Flop

Dear readers, is there a more beautiful phrase this morning than “cataclysmic loss of audience”?

NBC is facing a cataclysmic loss of audience for the 2022 Winter Olympics as viewership tanked for Friday’s Opening Ceremony, averaging just 16 million.

It is a record low for the Opening Ceremony (20.1 million for 1988 in Calgary was the previous record) and a whopping 43 percent below the 2018 Games in South Korea that notched 28.3 million viewers despite also dealing with a less than advantageous Asian time zone for American audiences.

It comes on the heels of Thursday’s ratings disaster that saw just 7.7 million people tune in, dramatically below same-night audiences of 2018 (16 million) and 2014 from Russia (20.02 million).

The Associated Press elaborates: “Through the first four nights of competition, NBC is on track for the lowest-rated Winter Games in history. . . . Thursday night’s audience of 8 million marks the smallest primetime Olympics audience on record, surpassing the 9 million that tuned in for the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Games.”

Discussions about whether Americans should watch this year’s Winter Olympics or boycott them often veer into what people think of the Olympics themselves. I won’t be watching, but I don’t begrudge anyone for tuning in to cheer on Team USA. I actually like that, once every four years, we get really fired up about downhill skiing, figure skating, curling, etc.