LOS ANGELES - Under heavy fire from viewers enraged by its delayed action, highly packaged Olympics coverage, the United States television network NBC has now received confirmation that its ratings were the lowest of any Games, summer or winter, since Mexico City in 1968.
Figures from Nielsen Media Research this week
showed just over 14 million households tuned in to NBC coverage, 36 per cent below the viewing figures for the Atlanta Games in 1996.
The Nielsen figures also fell far short of the minimum guaranteed to advertisers, forcing the network to offer free compensatory slots in prime time, right in the middle of its launch of new programmes.
The figures were a humiliation for the network but it still came out ahead. It paid $US705 million ($1.76 billion) for the rights and sold $US900 million in advertising; only $US50 million will be paid back.
Rather than broadcast events live in the middle of the night, NBC preferred to tape almost everything and show events the following evening, US time - in some cases almost 24 hours after the fact.
Since many media outlets, including NBC's 24-hour rolling news affiliate MSNBC, had announced results during the course of the day, the suspense of the key races was all but gone.
Tens of thousands of Americans living near the northern border switched to Canadian TV stations instead.
On the last Friday of the Games, NBC's ratings were almost overtaken by CBS, which was showing the finale of the insipid US version of Big Brother.
NBC holds US rights to the Games until 2008. It says it has no intention of changing its presentation format in the future, but that could change under pressure from advertisers and viewers.
- INDEPENDENT
