It appears that you’re watching the Olympics in Communist China in record numbers. Day 1 of the Olympics drew excellent ratings. Here’s the press release from NBC:
NBC’s BEIJING OLYMPICS ON PACE TO BE MOST WATCHED OLYMPICS IN HISTORY WITH 114 MILLION VIEWERS
BEIJING –Aug. 10, 2008 –NBC Universal's Beijing Olympics coverage is on pace to be the MOST WATCHED OLYMPICS IN HISTORY. Through two days NBCU has attracted a record 114 million total viewers – four million more than Atlanta in 1996 - the most watched Olympics in history and nearly 20 million more than Athens (95 million), according to data provided Nielsen Media Research.
Saturday's coverage on the Networks of NBC Universal reached 92 million total viewers, 14 million ahead of the comparable Saturday from Athens in 2004 (78 million).
NBC's Beijing Olympic two-day average viewership is 29.1 million and the national rating average of 16.2/30 is the best primetime rating through the first Saturday for a non-U.S. Summer Olympics since Montreal in 1976 (22.1/46) and a 22 percent jump from Athens in 2004 (13.3/25).
Saturday night's 24.1 million average viewers bested Athens by nearly 4.5 million viewers (19.8) and earned a rating of 13.9 rating/27 share, an 18 percent jump from Athens in 2004 (11.8/23).
NBC's LIVE primetime coverage, which included Michael Phelps collecting his first Beijing gold medal and seventh career Olympic gold medal in the 400m Individual Medley, and Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh winning their first match in Beach Volleyball, peaked with a 16.4/30 and 28.7 million average viewers in the 10 p.m. half hour.
MORE PHELPS IN PRIMETIME ON NBC:
"PHELPS IS TIGER [WOODS] IN A SPEEDO." – NBC's Dan Hicks:
Monday will be another busy day for Michael Phelps, and it's all LIVE in primetime on NBC. First, he'll swim for what could be his record-tying ninth career Olympic gold medal and third gold medal of the Beijing Games in an event he dominates, the 200m freestyle. Less than an hour later, the semifinal in another Phelps-dominated event, the 200m butterfly.
Then on Tuesday on NBC LIVE in primetime, Michael Phelps could become the greatest Olympian of all-time, swimming in two gold medal finals – the 200m butterfly and 4x200m freestyle relay. It is the only night where he could potentially win two gold medals – and he set world records and won both swims at the 2007 World Championships. This could be the night when Phelps breaks the all-time record for career gold medals, which is currently nine and shared by four athletes, including USA's Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz.
NBCOLYMPICS.COM ROLLS:
NBCOlympics.com followed up its record day on 8/8/08 with another enormous day of traffic. On Saturday (traditionally the lowest trafficked day of the week), the site garnered 62.7 million page views an increase of 475 percent from the opening day of competition of the Athens Games in 2006 (10.9 million).
Through two days NBCOlympics.com has totaled 132.6 million page views compared to 17.9 million page views for the first two days of the Athens Games an increase of 641 percent.
NBCOlympics.com registered 3.1 million video streams yesterday. By comparison, in Athens, the first day of competition received 115,014 video streams.
4.83 million unique users logged onto NBCOlympics.com yesterday an increase from the 4.21 million for 8/8/08 and nearly six times the unique users from the first day of competition in Athens (816,609 million).
It appears that NBC’s plans to put live video streaming on its Olympics website is paying off as well. And we’ll see if this momentum rides in the second week of the Olympics as swimming and gymnastics give way to track and field and less live events in primetime.
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