Thanks to NBC for Basically Financing the Olympic Games Where We in Europe Get To See Everything Live While In The US Its Prime Time Tape Delay

Philip M. Stone February 9, 2006

The financials for television coverage of the Torino Winter Olympic Games starting this weekend are staggering. For the US rights to Torino NBC paid $613 million, and by the time production costs and everything else is included it won’t see much change from $750 million. That’s a lot of commercials it has to sell and Madison Avenue figures NBC, if it’s lucky, may just break even compared to the $70 million it made on each of the last two Olympics.
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Compare those numbers also to the $578 million that Europe’s broadcasters paid in rights not just for Torino but including the Beijing 2008 Summer Games too, and you can see why NBC could rightfully ask for the Games to be renamed the NBC Olympic Games. NBC is paying $894 million for Beijing alone.

Although NBC will be showing some 416 hours of coverage -- including its MSNBC, CNBC, and USA cable networks it averages out to a little more than 24 hours a day -- when Americans get home at night from work just about everything will be finished for the day, so it is prime time tape delay.

Via the cable networks Americans will get to see live just about all of the men and women’s hockey and the curling – a sport that gets more popular with each passing Games – but the blockbuster Ladies Ice Skating is strictly prime time tape. NBC is hoping the US ladies do really well – it is holding back some inventory in the hopes they can sell the finals night bigtime, and the hope is that the Olympics in general will draw good viewership, bringing in last minute sponsors.

In Europe we get live coverage during the day; we get live coverage at night. Indeed most of the world shows the Olympics live, but when you have as much money invested in these games as NBC does it needs to guarantee itself huge prime time audiences for its commercial sponsors, and if they show that major showcase event live at 3 p.m. it’s not going to have that much of an audience then, and it will cut back on the audience at night.

A few years back, before the 2000 Sydney Summer Games, this writer attended an International Olympic Committee (IOC) sponsored meeting in its home Swiss city of Lausanne. The meeting was to discuss how to handle possible rights for the then emerging digital media – at that time it was down to the Internet rather than mobile phones and the like. And there was little doubt from IOC officials on how concerned they were that any digital coverage would have an adverse affect on the value of the Games to NBC, and they just plain were not about to let that happen. 

 But the meeting also provided an opportunity to ask NBC why it still insisted on prime time tape delay instead of showing showcase events live. If it showed the events live then Internet coverage in the US wouldn’t be harmful.

"In Europe, the Sydney Games will be occurring mostly during the early morning hours. Yet Europeans are used to getting up early for such events and the ratings are surprisingly high. If Europeans can get up in the middle of the night and watch their favorite athletes live then why can't Americans?"  the NBC producer was asked.

Well, that brought more than a few snickers from the mostly European audience, who knew what the NBC answer would be, but it seemed to bring near apoplexy to the NBC producer who actually answered the question. He basically said there were more viewers, thus more money to be made, in a four-hour block from 8 p.m. to midnight than there was from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. Hard to argue with that. But why not have both -- let those who want to get up early take a look and for those who sleep let them see prime time? But when you invest the kind of money NBC invests in the Olympics the answer was that you don't take chances in reducing that prime time audience.

What a difference six years can make. Now broadband rights are sold with the televisions rights, and if the broadcaster doesn’t use its broadband rights then it loses them. That rule has turned television into multi-platform media for the Games.

The IOC estimates that some 3.2 billion people can access the Winter Olympics, about 5% more than the Salt Lake City 2002 Games. Technically the Games will be covered in high definition for which most of Europe loses out – behind the times – but that is good news for the US and Asia.

Also those networks that are expanding their digital networks will be showing far more of the Games than they did four years ago. The BBC, for instance, showed about 100 hours of coverage from Salt Lake, but plans five times that much from Torino. With 84 sports to choose from, the networks won’t have any difficulty filling their screens.

The 17 days of coverage starts with the Opening ceremonies Friday evening and without wanting to rub it in too much, Europeans will be watching it live.

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US Network Wins Early Morning Olympic Swimming Contest - October 28, 2006

Never was there any doubt that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would move several high profile events at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to benefit US television network NBC. Afterall, NBC paid $3.55 billion (€2.8 billion) for US broadcast rights since 2000 and the financial results from the Turin Winter Games were a bust.

The IOC announced schedule changes for swimming and some gymnastics finals to allow live broadcast in North American prime-time, 12 to 15 hours ahead of Beijing, 8 hours ahead of Europe. Earlier in the year NBC had proposed additional changes that were not adopted.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which secured rights for Europe’s public broadcasters, expressed unhappiness. (see EBU press release)

“Such a schedule is a matter of discussion with the host country, the broadcasters and the federations,” said IOC coordinator Hein Verbruggen. “What comes out of it is a compromise.”

Other compromises include rowing championships timed for prime-time in the UK and diving finals to suit Australia.

NBC Going Full Blast On Olympics Broadband - February 12, 2006

NBCOlympics.com is showing time-delayed complete runs and routines for the medial winners and all US participants for practically all of the 84 events being played out in Torino. But access will only be available from within the US via technology that can tell the city/country of a user’s address. Thus the sale of video rights by the IOC based on geography can still be maintained even on Internet broadband delivery.

Video is also being made available to US mobile phone users, and via Google, but again none of it will be live, all of it will be available only after NBC has aired the competition on terrestrial television, and non-US viewers will get shut out.

NBC had good news and bad news from its telecast of the opening ceremonies. The broadcast drew 22.8 million viewers which is the network’s highest audience this year. On the other hand, when it broadcast Salt Lake City live four years ago it had double that number of viewers. There is something about live television …