Through five nights of Beijing Olympics broadcasting, NBC reports that it has averaged 31.3 million viewers. That’s nearly five million more than the first five days of the Athens Olympics in 2004.
Online records are being smashed. Hardly surprising, considering how much Internet usage has increased in the past four years. Even so, the numbers are impressive.
On Tuesday, NBC had its most viewed and highest rated night of the Olympics so far as Michael Phelps set the record for most Olympic gold medals ever won, reaching 82 million total viewers and posting a 19.9 rating, 34 share.
NBC says 168 million people have watched some of the Olympic broadcasts thus far, nearly 15 million more than for the Athens games.
Meanwhile, online viewing is skyrocketing. NBCOlympics.com has served up 17.7 million video streams thus far, compared to a mere 2.2 million for the entire Athens games.
NBC Universal has issued its first Total Audience Measurement Index (TAMi) which combines television (P2+ reach), online (unique users), mobile (WAP unique users and Mobile VOD unique users) and TV VOD (unique users). The highest TAMi thus far was for Sunday: 113,001,144.
"Obviously our multi-platform Olympic strategy is a success, but this record-breaking Olympic performance is proving that network television is more alive than ever. We are breaking records that are 20, 30 and nearly 50 years old – this is a fantastic triumph for network TV," said NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker.
RBR/TVBR observation: What can we say? It’s a great show and NBC is doing a fine job of delivering the excitement to living rooms. We tried the online site as well. It is not completely intuitive, but good. At one point we clicked a video and thought we were getting a brief promotional introduction – which turned out to be a long promotion and nothing else. Then we had to go back and click again on the program we wanted to watch.
