NBC Expects an Olympian Profit

NBC parlayed the nation’s Winter Games medal avalanche, a controversial skating protest and the bitter international backlash against the U.S. into a 15% ratings jump over the 1998 Nagano Games on CBS. The strong performance enabled NBC to sell an additional $20 million in advertising after the Olympic torch was lit and underscored the boost a network gets when the Games are staged in the country’s backyard.

An estimated 184 million Americans, or 84% of all households with television sets, tuned in for Olympic action during the last two weeks. The network that paid $545 million for broadcast rights from Salt Lake City sold $740 million in advertising and expects to clear a $75-million profit.

NBC was the top-rated broadcast network during each prime-time broadcast from Salt Lake City, according to Nielsen Media Research. NBC also registered a 23% ratings increase among hard-to-reach but highly desirable viewers ages 18 to 34.

NBC, which holds broadcast rights for Games to be held through 2008, and the U.S. Olympic Committee knew going into Salt Lake City that the Olympic movement was falling from favor among younger Americans. Unlike their parents, who viewed the Olympic Games through the prism of the Cold War, media-savvy youngsters are more likely to treat the Olympic Games as just another media-driven event akin to the Oscars and the Super Bowl.

NBC’s Olympic audience was split almost evenly between viewers over and under 50. But the number of men ages 18 to 34 watching rose by 26%, the highest increase of any single demographic.

Younger viewers remain “the most difficult audience in television, it doesn’t matter what [program] it is,” said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports & Olympics. “They have the most other opportunities, and, obviously, they take advantage of them.”

Ebersol might well have been talking about Robert Talbert, 34, of Huntington Beach. Talbert, who works in the security industry, said he was turned off by NBC commentator Bob Costas’ style. What’s more, Talbert said, “I wouldn’t let the Olympics change my schedule.” On Sunday, Talbert ignored the gold medal hockey match and instead rode bicycles along the Huntington Beach coastline with Nedra Bradshaw, 30, of Irvine.

That’s the kind of indifference NBC hoped to counter with an extensive advertising and marketing campaign that began months before the Games. NBC hosted opening ceremony viewing parties in bars, crisscrossed the country in two Winnebagos loaded with Olympic paraphernalia and capped nightly broadcasts with live performances from Salt Lake City by Sheryl Crow, Dave Matthews and other popular acts.

NBC benefited from a decision to concentrate on edgy sports action instead of the softer human-interest pieces that aired during the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. NBC also cut back on tape-delayed broadcasts that caused NBC’s ratings to plummet during the distant Sydney Games.

Also helping the network was the fact that Salt Lake City is just a time zone or two away from most American viewers. The network drew criticism before the Games began for a 21/2-hour delay in nightly broadcasts in the Pacific time zone, but West Coast ratings consistently were stronger than the national average.

News, both on and off the ice rinks and ski slopes, clearly drove viewers to NBC.

The unprecedented U.S. medal bonanza ignited interest. So did the pairs skating scandal. The action continued on Sunday when Canada beat the U.S. hockey team, 5 to 2, in the gold medal match. And Olympic officials stripped medals from cross-country skiers suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs.

“People tune in to where the news is being made, and that’s translated into a terrific Olympics for NBC,” said Stephen Greyser, a sports marketing expert at Harvard University. “Viewers have been tuning in and staying with NBC.” Though much is made of the steady splintering of mass media, the Olympics proved that network coverage of the Games is still a powerful force. Ratings for NBC broadcasts through Saturday were 147% higher than the current television season’s prime time average among ABC, CBS and NBC.

NBC’s broadcasts delivered what the network’s promotion arm promised. “The Salt Lake City Games will go down as one of the most significant games of our times,” said Denver-based sports marketing executive Dean Bonham.

“They’ve unquestionably been the healing games for the U.S. in the aftermath of Sept. 11. But there have also been more compelling stories about athletes than in any Games I can remember.”

The wealth of attractive story lines ranged from that of Vonetta Flowers, the first African American to win Winter gold, to Jim Shea, a third-generation Olympian whose family is being described as “the first family” of the U.S. Olympic movement.

NBC also recognized that most Americans have limited time. The network cut back its nightly Olympic broadcast to 31/2 hours from Sydney’s five-hour schedule.

NBC will stick with the slimmed-down schedule for broadcasts during the Athens Summer Games in 2004, the Torino Winter Games in 2006 and Beijing Summer Games in 2008.

NBC wasn’t alone in breathing a sigh of relief at public interest in this year’s Winter Games. The medal avalanche that buried American athletes in gold, silver and bronze and strong television ratings materialized at a key juncture for the USOC, which has used the Games to court potential corporate sponsors needed to pay for training of future Olympic teams.

Early on in the Winter Games, the USOC’s marketing team wined and dined corporate executives with elaborate tours that included stops at the Olympic Village, the international media center and the nearby USA House, where athletes sporting Olympic medals mingled with potential sponsors.

At first, corporate executives “were giving me an earful about how all the other events have caught up with and passed the Olympics,” said Robert Prazmark, an executive with IMG, the Cleveland sports marketing firm that recruits corporate sponsors.

But with the U.S. team awash in medals and NBC’s ratings high, “potential customers are asking how do we get involved,” Prazmark said. “I’d love to say it’s skill, that we could have predicted this swell in interest. But everything has just fallen into place.”

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Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this story.