NBC Online Olympic Coverage Pumps Up TV Audience

Amid unprecedented live online Olympic coverage in the U.S., we have the umpteenth example -- following the proliferation of sports radio and TV highlight shows and events appearing live online.

When it comes to sports coverage, enough is never enough.

Prime Time Gold

First, some basics. Monday, NBC produced its highest-rated prime-time coverage from Beijing -- drawing 19.9 percent of U.S. households. Its prime-time average is 17.8 percent, up 16 percent from the 2004 Athens Games and the highest average for a Summer Olympics held outside the U.S. since the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Partly, this is dumb luck, which is often a key factor in the sports world.

When NBC paid US$894 million to air these Games, no one even knew where they'd be held, let alone that they'd be held in a controversial emerging superpower. Or that the most famous U.S. Olympic athlete ever -- Michael Phelps -- would be front-and-center in a sport that gives out so many medals he could rack up gold night after night in prime time. Or that, after NBC lobbying, Olympic organizers would move race times so Phelps could do that on live TV. (Except, in keeping with network TV entertainment norms, in Pacific and Mountain time zones.)

NBC could have gotten luckier, if, say, Tiger Woods had shown up in Beijing to swim against Phelps. And Brett Favre.

Ratings Synergy

But luck aside, NBC putting about 2,200 live hours of the world TV feed online -- after ratcheting up its Olympic cable TV hours in recent Games -- undermines any notion that online coverage will ever threaten the appeal of TV sports.

Quite the opposite, NBC research president Alan Wurtzel said Wednesday. Instead of cannibalizing NBC's TV coverage, he suggests, NBC's online coverage is helping build overall Olympic interest that then boosts TV ratings. About 50 percent of NBC online video users are going online to see something they missed on TV, and about 40 percent go to watch what they saw again. And when Sunday's dramatic 4x100-meter freestyle relay race was streamed online 1.1 million times, it was also forwarded by users 1.5 million times.

But NBC's non-TV Olympic traffic -- including areas such as the 476,062 consumers who accessed Olympic coverage via mobile devices such as cell phones -- is dwarfed by the power of TV, which so far constitutes about 93 percent of NBC's total consumer reach. Says Wurtzel, noting 90 percent of Olympic viewers use TV only, 9.8 percent use TV and the Internet and 0.2 percent say they watch the Olympics online only: "TV is truly the mothership."

Upper Hand

But the Internet also might allow broadcasters, long seen as Gullivers being tied down by cable channels and Web sites, to bolt upright and squish some of those supposed captors.

Consider that NBC's online traffic, so far, is skyrocketing. It's drawn 17.7 million video streams (up 705 percent from the 2004 Athens total) and 21.1 million unique users (up 90 percent from the Athens total). That's largely because NBC can offer something online that nobody else can -- it's own TV coverage and the TV world feed it got for its rights fee.

The biggest online sports winners -- not just NBC, but also other networks shoveling their exclusive big-event TV online -- might just be those musty old 20th-century networks that were supposed to get mouse-clicked to death.

Still, NBC could be generating more Olympic interest. NBC swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines was probably joking when, in noting the U.S. men had a huge lead in the 4x200 freestyle relay Tuesday, he said, "My mom could probably anchor this relay."

NBC should try to somehow test such innovative suggestions on air.