NBC’S WINTER OLYMPICS TO KICK OFF A DAY BEFORE OPENING CEREMONY

NBC announced plans on Tuesday to “jumpstart” next year’s Winter Olympics from Sochi, Russia in primetime on Thursday, Feb. 6, one day before the opening ceremony, with coverage of two new events, team figure skating and slopestyle snowboarding, as well as women’s freestyle moguls. Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, told a news […]

MOVIE STUDIOS CUTTING AD BUDGETS

Movie studios spent 12 percent less on advertising during the third quarter of this year than they did during the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen Research. Nielsen doesn’t break out the amount paid by advertisers in individual media categories, but many studios have conspicuously dropped ads from newspapers in many cities without […]

NO OLYMPICS — BUT NBC STILL AT TOP OF RATINGS LIST

After two weeks of Olympics domination, the latest Nielsen ratings list returned to normal — “summer” normal, that is — last week. And NBC still had three shows among the top ten, including the top two, the Tuesday edition of America’s Got Talent and Sunday’s NFL preseason opener between Indianapolis and Pittsburgh. The Wednesday edition […]

GOOD MORNING AMERICA AGAIN IS MOST-WATCHED MORNING SHOW

NBC had been hoping that the Today show would get a big bounce from the Olympics. It did, clobbering ABC’s Good Morning America for the entire two-week event. And on the first Monday following the Olympics, it remained ahead with a show that featured many of the winning U.S. athletes. And that was it. By […]

FOR NBC, OLYMPICS WERE LIKE MUST-SEE-TV ALL OVER AGAIN

was down somewhat from the opening week, but by adding the Sunday wrap-up show London Gold to its schedule, the network managed to win the top eight positions on the Nielsen ratings list. The top spot went to Tuesday’s coverage, which drew 30.15 million viewers and scored an overall household rating of 17.6 and a […]

NBC: THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE TAPE DELAYED OLYMPICS COVERAGE

NBC may have boasted on Tuesday that its coverage of the London Olympics drew more viewers in the U.S. than any event in TV history, but it apparently believes it could have done better — if it had only tape-delayed a few more events for primetime viewing. Turning aside the sometimes vociferous complaints about the […]

OLYMPICS: GREAT FOR NBC; LOUSY FOR MOVIES

The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in London may have drawn record ratings for a non-U.S. Olympics, but clearly some of that audience opted to stay home on Sunday rather than go to movie theaters. Universal had figured that ticket sales for The Bourne Legacy on Sunday would fall, but the actual plunge that […]

NBC CUTS LEGENDARY CLOSING CEREMONY ACTS TO PLUG NEW SHOW

For a time it seemed as if NBC had seen the error of its ways by agreeing to stream the closing ceremonies of the London Olympics live on Sunday afternoon. And then it appeared to undo all the good will that it had created by interrupting its evening broadcast of the ceremony to preview its […]

GANNETT STATIONS TAKE OLYMPICS LEAD

Attracting a massive 51 percent of the local audience in the 25-54 age group, Denver’s KUSA has emerged as the top-rated station in primetime in the top 25 markets during the Olympics. Gannett Broadcasting, which owns the NBC affiliate, also owns the No. 2- and No. 3-rated Olympics stations, KARE Minneapolis and WXIA Atlanta. Indeed, […]

RATINGS: THEY’RE ALL ABOUT THE OLYMPICS

If a week had ten days, NBC’s Olympics coverage would have swept the entire list of the top ten positions on Nielsen’s weekly rating list. As if was, it took the top seven, with Tuesday’s telecast drawing the most viewers — 38.7 million and Thursday’s a close second with 36.8 million. CBS reruns filled the […]

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