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Olympics Gives the Gold to Networks
By admin | March 30, 2010
It turns out viewers are still willing to tune into prime time network television over their favorite ad-supported cable shows, just so long as by doing so they can watch the best athletes of their generation going toe-to-toe in international competition.
NBC covered the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and averaged 24.4 million viewers, a 21% increase from the Torino games. Perhaps even more interestingly, the top 40 cable networks saw their viewership drop by 7.2% overall during the time the Olympics were being covered.
CNBC managed to increase its viewership despite the lousy cable climate by covering the Olympics themselves, carrying a number of niche events like curling, which sparked a bizarre media interest this year. With just over 100 hours devoted to Olympic coverage, CNBC avoided the fate granted to networks like CNN, which fell a whopping 54% during prime time.
Other channels that took a major hit during the Olympic coverage include the Discovery Channel, the Hallmark Channel, TV Land, Spike TV, VH1, Comedy Central, Travel Channel, Bravo and Lifetime.
One of the outliers was the USA Network, which, though it did not gain a lift from its 41 hours of Olympic coverage over 17 days, managed to win the month with 2.95 million viewers in prime, thanks in part to their popular shows on WWE wrestling and NCIS repeats.
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