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NBC's coverage of the Sochi Olympics


Quaker2001

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The first part of that isn't as important as you'd think as we learned comparing London's numbers to Beijing. I'm curious to see the numbers from tonight though. This night in Vancouver was the highest rated of the Olympics, in large part because you had gold medals from Lindsay Vonn, Shani Davis, Shaun White, and also had Apolo Ohno competing. This year, not so much.

Yeah, that was the night that the Olympics took down American Idol for the first time. They did have figure skating tonight, but I have to think that they're still going to be off of the Vancouver numbers by quite a bit.

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I'm not a Vieira hater, but I doubt that she knows a whole lot about obscure winter sports. Expect the studio interviews to be pretty lame. Why not have Al Michaels pull double duty for a night or two?

On another note Rebecca Lowe has been great on NBCSN, but I doubt many people are seeing her shift starting at 3 AM Eastern.

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Anyone notice the similarities between NBC's gymnastics and figure skating broadcast teams? You have an old fart doing play-by-play for either sport (Hammond and Trautwig), an obnoxious squeak-voiced guy (Hamilton and Daggett) and a Canadian (Bezic and Schlegel).

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Anyone notice the similarities between NBC's gymnastics and figure skating broadcast teams? You have an old fart doing play-by-play for either sport (Hammond and Trautwig), an obnoxious squeak-voiced guy (Hamilton and Daggett) and a Canadian (Bezic and Schlegel).

The same person (David Michaels) produces NBC's gymnastics and figure skating coverage. Schlegel has been replaced by Nastia Liukin since London.

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Interesting piece about the 2 different NBC teams covering figure skating. As I've posted before, I'm all for the new guard.

http://www.awfulannouncing.com/2014/february/comparing-nbc-s-live-and-primetime-figure-skating-coverage.html

I'm not big into figure skating, but the sense I've gotten is that a lot of people prefer the Gannon/Lipinski/Weir crew to the usual primetime crew. I have a feeling by 2018, well

See some changes

stupid mobile site

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I'm not big into figure skating, but the sense I've gotten is that a lot of people prefer the Gannon/Lipinski/Weir crew to the usual primetime crew. I have a feeling by 2018, well

See some changes

The NBCSN team has been vastly superior to the NBC team. Hamilton and Bezic have never learned the new judging system and have been irrelevant for the last decade because of it. With Tom Hammond likely retiring after 2016, I do think Terry Gannon will be taking his place in the next Olympics. Hamilton is such an icon in the sport, though, that I have a hard time seeing NBC getting rid of him. Maybe they could move him to a studio analyst role instead.

Since the live coverage this year hasn't eaten into the primetime ratings all that much, I wouldn't be surprised if we have the dual coverage again in 2018. I had originally thought that NBC would schedule figure skating so that it could be shown live in primetime, but they're going to have so many snow events to be covering live that they may not have enough airtime for live figure skating. NBCSN could show the skating live at 4am and then NBC can repackage it for primetime to fill in around whatever live coverage they have.

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The NBCSN team has been vastly superior to the NBC team. Hamilton and Bezic have never learned the new judging system and have been irrelevant for the last decade because of it. With Tom Hammond likely retiring after 2016, I do think Terry Gannon will be taking his place in the next Olympics. Hamilton is such an icon in the sport, though, that I have a hard time seeing NBC getting rid of him. Maybe they could move him to a studio analyst role instead.

Since the live coverage this year hasn't eaten into the primetime ratings all that much, I wouldn't be surprised if we have the dual coverage again in 2018. I had originally thought that NBC would schedule figure skating so that it could be shown live in primetime, but they're going to have so many snow events to be covering live that they may not have enough airtime for live figure skating. NBCSN could show the skating live at 4am and then NBC can repackage it for primetime to fill in around whatever live coverage they have.

I'm think the same thing. My guess is NBC will try to set up the schedule so that as many of the alpine, snowboard, and freestyle ski events are in US primetime (which is 10am-2pm Korea time) or late night. If the figure skating follows the same schedule as Sochi, it would start at 5am ET. Obviously far from ideal, but there's probably not a real good alternative. It'll be tricky for them, but so long as are covering events live in primetime every night, unlike CBS who seemed afraid to do so

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I'm think the same thing. My guess is NBC will try to set up the schedule so that as many of the alpine, snowboard, and freestyle ski events are in US primetime (which is 10am-2pm Korea time) or late night. If the figure skating follows the same schedule as Sochi, it would start at 5am ET. Obviously far from ideal, but there's probably not a real good alternative. It'll be tricky for them, but so long as are covering events live in primetime every night, unlike CBS who seemed afraid to do so

Having the figure skating on tape would also serve as an insurance policy against event delays/cancellations due to weather. I figured NBC might try to schedule the figure skating from 10am-2pm in Korea, but if a snow event that starts at 10am gets postponed, NBC doesn't really want to be filling the time with the early groups of skaters. CBS really got burned by weather delays for the few events they did try to show live in 1998, so it would be good for NBC to have figure skating to show if they need it. Plus, it would allow one of the premier events for Korean audiences to be held in their primetime.

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Scott Hamilton is still pretty awesome and he's from Ohio so there's that, haha, but Lipinski/Weir are my favorites by far! I DVR the NBCSN version and watch that, then while the primetime stuff is on I usually have the iPad in my hand and barely pay attention to the TV. I do think they should keep Hamilton around, but put Tara and Johnny in the booth because they're much better in my opinion.

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I'm pleasantly surprised that NBC isn't forcing Johnny Weir to tone it down during the Games. They're basically allowing him to wear and say whatever he wants. It's creating a great buzz on the internet for NBC's coverage and for a sport that, quite frankly, has been struggling to attract viewers under age 50 for about ten years now.

Ratings dropped last night with Meredith hosting. Interested in seeing what they will be tonight, with the highlights from the hockey game earlier being played.

I highly doubt the drop in viewership was due to Vieira hosting. It was Valentine's Day on a Friday, no big-name American athletes won a medal, and the men's figure skating event was a disaster. People aren't going to drop their Valentine's Day plans to watch that.

We'll see what happens going into the second week of the Games. A lot of big-name American athletes will be competing this week, and the hockey team is sure to draw more enthusiasm for the Games. Overall, I think NBC's ratings are holding up well considering that almost all of the U.S. athletes who were hyped before the Games failed to deliver last week. When that happened in 2006, the ratings collapsed after the third night of coverage in the face of heavy competition from the other networks. With many of the top U.S. athletes competing in the second week, I think chances are fairly strong that the ratings stay in the 13.5-14.0 range for the rest of the Games.

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And what if the ratings are low tonight with the same host?

It's Saturday. Friday and Saturday are the 2 lowest rated TV nights of the week (not to mention last night was a Valentine's day Friday). Olympic ratings ebb and flow a lot, but it's based on factors like that and what sports/athletes are featured. The host has little to no effect on the rating. If you honestly think Vieira's presence makes that much of a difference, you're nuts

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I wish Scott Hamilton could've used his Blades of Glory commentary in Sochi while reporting for NBC...

"The undefeatable underdog, ice skating's backdoor lover, Chazz Michael Michaels has come in here and captivated this arena like a stack of classic Euro porn."

:blink::lol:;):P

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So is Bob Costas back on NBC Prime Time or is he still suffering from Pink eye?

Matt Lauer is back tonight. Costas is day to day.

If I was NBC, I'd shut him down the rest of the Olympics. He will be back to full strength the next time he's seen on NBC, which will be during the NFL season if he doesn't come back.

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Matt Lauer is back tonight. Costas is day to day.

If I was NBC, I'd shut him down the rest of the Olympics. He will be back to full strength the next time he's seen on NBC, which will be during the NFL season if he doesn't come back.

Yeah, at this point, I'd say that if he's not able to come back tomorrow, they should just sit him out and find a consistent replacement for the rest of the Games. I'm kind of surprised that they keep using Lauer and Vieira instead of putting in Al Michaels or Dan Patrick.

I wasn't expecting high viewership last night given that it was Saturday and the top American athletes failed to medal yet again, but 16.5 million viewers is pretty bad:

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/02/16/tv-ratings-saturday-olympics-down-from-last-saturday-48-hours-slides/237389/

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