© Reuters. 2022 Beijing Olympics – Opening Ceremony – Nationwide Stadium, Beijing, China – February 4, 2022. Basic view outdoors the Chook’s Nest Stadium through the opening ceremony. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
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By Helen Coster
(Reuters) -NBC’s protection of the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic Video games averaged near 14 million U.S. tv viewers, in keeping with preliminary knowledge offered by NBCUniversal on Saturday, about half the TV viewers for the final Winter Video games opening ceremony 4 years in the past.Throughout all platforms, together with the USA Community, NBC Sports activities app and Peacock streaming service, NBC’s common viewers reached almost 16 million folks, the corporate stated in an e mail.
The opening ceremony for the 2021 Tokyo Summer time Video games, which traditionally attracts a much bigger viewers than the Winter Video games, drew 16.7 million TV viewers. Throughout all platforms, 17 million folks watched the ceremony.
Conventional TV viewing has seen a decline in recent times as viewers have embraced streaming, making comparisons tough.
The 14 million determine consists of the TV viewers for the reside NBC broadcast that started at 6:30 a.m. ET (1130 GMT) Friday, in addition to the primetime broadcast that started at 8 p.m. ET. The PyeongChang opening ceremony in 2018, in South Korea, drew 27.9 million TV viewers for only a primetime broadcast.
The Video games opened on Friday evening in a snow- and ice-themed ceremony on the Chook’s Nest stadium in Beijing that concluded with the cauldron lit by two younger Chinese language Olympians, certainly one of them a member of China’s Uyghur minority.
Throughout a efficiency that went longer than scheduled on a frigid evening within the Chinese language capital, President Xi Jinping declared the opening of an Olympics whose preparations had been beset by the pandemic and criticism over human rights in China.
The Beijing Video games, the second Olympics broadcast by NBC through the coronavirus pandemic, current a chance for the community, owned by Comcast Corp (NASDAQ:), to refine its technique primarily based on what it discovered final summer time. Its broadcast of the Tokyo Video games, which had been delayed for a yr due to the pandemic, drew the smallest viewers for the Summer time Video games since NBC started broadcasting them in 1988. But the competitions nonetheless pulled within the greatest audiences on tv once they aired, making them enticing showcases for advertisers.
For Beijing, NBC stated it’s doing extra to simplify the viewing expertise, addressing criticism that final summer time’s content material was tough to seek out throughout the corporate’s many platforms, together with its Peacock streaming service.
NBC is streaming each Beijing occasion reside on Peacock’s premium tier, along with airing protection throughout the NBC broadcast community, USA Community and CNBC cable networks, NBCOlympics.com web site and NBC Sports activities app. It’s also providing a customizable schedule on NBCOlympics.com, and air on-screen cues throughout studio segments that remind viewers what’s developing.
NBCUniversal paid $7.65 billion to increase its U.S. broadcast rights for the Olympics via 2032.
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