NBC releases early ratings for opening ceremony
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NBC Universal is describing the early overnight ratings for its Friday night broadcast coverage of the Opening Ceremony in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest as the best ever for an overseas Games.
From 8 until 11:19 p.m. (the coverage began at 7:30 p.m. EST and PST with a preview), NBC’s network coverage generated a 21.5 early overnight rating. (Early overnights are a first glimpse at how a program has fared.)
Here are the previous (early ratings) highs for past opening ceremony ratings generated by overseas Games:
Sydney 2000: 18.5
Seoul 1988: 18.3
Athens 2004: 18.0
Barcelona 199: 16.5
As good as the Beijing Games opening ceremony was, the early ratings noticeably lagged the 27.2 overnight rating that the opening ceremony enjoyed during NBC’s coverage of the homegrown 1996 Atlanta Games -- which didn’t have to battle multiple time zones.
NBC is expected to release total viewers and households data later today.
On the Internet front, the NBCOlympics.com website drew 70 million page views Friday. NBC Universal described that as a 900% increase over the opening day of the 2004 Athens Games. Since Aug. 1, NBC Universal reported, the website has generated more than 127 million page views, or nearly half of what the website drew during the entire Athens Games.
NBC Universal has high hopes for the Beijing Games. It is producing 3,600 hours of programming -- a stunning increase from the 171 hours it produced for the 1996 Atlanta Games.
The media company hopes to persuade advertisers that content being delivered via broadcast TV, cable television, the Internet and cellphone is clicking with consumers. To that end, on Tuesday NBC Universal will deliver the first data to be generated by TAMI -- the Total Audience Measurement Index, a system that the media company created to track total consumer interaction with its media coverage of the Games.
-- Greg Johnson
Top photo of fireworks lighting up the National Stadium
(the Bird’s Nest) during Olympics opening ceremony by Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times, NBC logo via NBC Universal