On the Olympics and Ratings...

[acroyear]

Olympic Idols:

NBC, the network that has over time invested billions of dollars in Olympic coverage, has taken a beating in the TV ratings on nights when these Winter Games were up against several popular shows -- most notably the amateur entertainment contest "American Idol" and the offbeat series "Desperate Housewives." ("Idol," especially, has become a national phenomenon, an un-Olympian event in which just about anyone can compete and unfortunately often does, in the manner of a new skier tumbling head over heels the whole length of the downhill course and getting a unanimous verdict from the judges at the bottom: "zero.")

WTOP also addressed this in their "talkback" question yesterday - "Why are the olympics tanking in the ratings".  And I think this hits it: sports are no longer "reality" in the face of "reality tv".  Individual sports are increasingly not something the couch potato can relate to anymore.  America is a "team" country, and individual merit is no longer worth what the "team" (with strong individuals as its backbone) means (with the oddball exception being NASCAR, but that's as much for the worship of cars in this country as anything else).

When Survivor or Idol are on TV, people can watch that and think "I could be in there", and then are able engage with the program by guessing what they would do in such a situation.  That engagement is key to return viewers, and the Olympics (*either* season) can't get that engagement anymore.  Its not something someone can just get up and do.  I can't just go "hey, I wanna do skeleton" - the equipment, the kit, the insurance, and finally the commute to some place that actually supports it (meaning they have their own insurance, too) being potentially *days* away, means its just not something someone can say "hey, I can do that!".  So the disconnect is there.

Olympic athletes are perceived as the elite at a time when America is worshipping the (worst) examples of the "common man" (well, person).  Just as they can't deal with what they see as elitism in science, they can't deal with what they see as elitism in athletics anymore.

And in both cases, the "elitism" is only in their minds.  Its less on the minds of the athletes (Bode Miller not withstanding) than it is with America's real sports heroes in baseball, basketball, and football...

Comments

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

I think you're overthinking this.

Perhaps it is that NBC has overhyped and overproduced the Olympics within an inch of their lives and killed the golden goose.

Also, I think that Americans have gotten sedentary and can no longer identify with Olympic athletes any more.

Oh -- and baseball ratings are down as well. Basketball has been in decline since Michael Jordan left, as it's all about showboating and there's no defense played until the playoffs. Only football and college basketball are showing any growth in TV ratings.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, i think its a little deeper than just "identify with".

and college basketball has been up a bit as pro has dropped. march madness still gets the attention beyond even the olympics (partly because the games are cross-network).

As for NBC, what could be done? If they just "showed the stuff" (and live as some have asked for it), it would certainly cost a lot less, but ratings would drop like a tank. If you can't get more than 13-20 rating points running an edited version of the slalom, how the hell does one think that showing *ALL* of the 150 runs live is going to improve anything?

There's a reason "Wide World of Sports" is no longer on ABC (and hasn't been for years), and it has nothing to do with losing Howard Cosell.

The sports themselves were not interesting to Americans long before the Olympic ratings started their decline; its a symptom, the cause is much older.

Granted, NBCOlympics.com is heading in what I think will be the Olympics' final "resting place" in America: pick your own coverage.

Within 4 years it will be technically possible to go to the website, pick the athletes who's runs you want to see, and let the website assemble a giant movie download (with 5-10 second commercials in between, or the "sponsor in the corner" that soccer on tv does) that you simply drop into your video IPod, plug into your TV, and watch whenever you get the time. You could even tell the web site (as a cookie preference) *not* to give you the results and put the events in the order of their run rather than the order of thier finish, or see the medal listings and do the "NBC" thing of top contenders + all americans.

The PPV approach is what it'll take to make the Olympics profitable for American broadcasters again - only it will take the resources of the internet itself, rather than 3 cable channel signals, to pull it off.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

sheesh. i'm a goddamn genius sometimes, and i'm not going to see a dime for this idea...

just remember, when in 2010 this is how you watch the olympics, that you read it here first.

[dawntreader]

you're a humble god-damned Wile. E. SUPERgenius that's what! *beepbeep* ;)

i do agree with your original point. i can't imagine how any network will be able to afford running the Olympic games without serious advertising sponsorship and grants, that if people aren't watching anymore, the network isn't going to get. it isn't feasible to show all events all the time, especially Live. due to timezone differences, and sheer boredom of watching 150 runs, or 30 skaters (of whom 10 are in medal contention), or obscure games played between countries no one's heard of, it isn't possible to find the audience you need to make it economical.

i can definitely see the PPV approach for the Olympics working out better than the Internet download/view approach. that would probably work really well. people could get the events they wanted, watch in their entirety, and not be subject to the mass garbage that i've been fast forwarding through this season so far.

but, no matter how fast teh Internets get, there's not going to be a good enough compromise between watching it on a large TV as opposed to a teeny, grainy, pixellated window that skips and hiccups and "buffers" every 30 seconds. even if the computer capabilities and internet streaming video improves, they'll just have bigger files to run, which will compromise quality.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the traditional PPV approach was tried and failed in a spectacularly disasterous (financially) way with the TripleCast format. Traditional PPV will be dead in 4 years (you heard it here first).

Keep in mind that the eventual integration of cable/satellite tv and the internet means that the internet will be a factor in this regardless of whether or not the ipod is used. What can happen is that instead of interacting with the 'net directly, you can program your cable box to send the request to the cable system and let their internet connection assemble the product and send it to you.

And you obviously haven't seen a real download - this is not streaming, this is downloading like podcasting (or mp3s/iTunes): you get the whole show before you play it. (or your cable system downloads it and the broadcasts it to you). you won't do this over a modem.

720mbaud density files are of a higher visual/audio quality than NTSC TV. 1000mbaud files are almost dvd quality.

I never said this would bring the Olympics "live" - this is a solution that acknowledges that the vast majority of the population of America *can't* see the Olympics live, no matter when (or where) it is. That is the reality that NBC has tried to deal with, the reality that the "i wanna see it live" people can't comprehend.

[dawntreader]

but with download comes illegal filesharing, doesn't it?

i think the previous attempts at PPV failed because the abbreviated versions were still running in regular broadcast mode.

what i don't understand is why ESPN doesn't pick up the Olympics, away from the regular networks? seems a likely "leap" to me.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the traditional PPV approach because it was too expensive, badly marketted, and gave the viewers a combination of too much choice (what to what what to watch) with too little choice (except its on a 3am! whah!).

traditional PPV is dying, and has been for years. like i said, it'll be dead by 2010. download on demand i'll watch it when i feel like it is the future (as tivo and ipod video, even in these early stages, has already shown).

as for filesharing? if they gave a crap, maybe - it depends on how much advertising is put into the download. the advertising may pay for it because its traditional advertising rather than "pay per click". if advertising pays for it all, then they will actually want people to share the files - if they like what they see they'll go to the web site and pick up their own.

if advertising isn't enough and you have to pay for coverage, DRM technology will be strong enough to restrict your playback. iTunes/iPod video is already successful for the vast majority even today.

as for ESPN? most of it is that the big networks have always been able to out-bid them for the rights. They couldn't afford to do it unless (like USA/CNBC/MSNBC (and in '02 & '04, Bravo) they piggybacked onto their primary owning major network, ABC (as ESPN and ABC are owned by Disney) and ABC gave up on the Olympics after '84's crappy ratings and the retirement of their better sportscasters.

and ESPN's ratings have been in the tank for almost 10 years now; they're broke, relatively speaking. the majors are still key, along with the ppv market for public broadcasts (i.e., the ppv games paid for by bars and pubs, which will be ppv's last stand).

edit

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

the traditional PPV approach already failed because it was too expensive, badly marketted, and gave the viewers a combination of too much choice (what to what what to watch) with too little choice (except its on a 3am! whah!).

Re: edit

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

Stop depressing me. I *liked* the PPV from Barcelona. I was able to (oh joy, oh rapture) see ALL of my favorite events (gymnastics and equestrian) plus a lot of the other events I enjoy (diving, swimming, some track & field).

With 3 people sharing the bill and running 2 VCRs 24/7, we got every horse (and some of it was hilarious) and every gymnast (good and bad). It was actually very educational. All I need to do now is figure out a sane way to pull from those tapes (yes, I still have them) and make DVDs of the The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

keep in mind, when it comes to file-sharing, that the attention span for this stuff is relatively short. after a week, its so old news (and people have so many new things to watch) that they won't care about it.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

My TiVO can download content for me in the fullest resoloution my TV supports, and respect the copy protection tags that the content provider requires. I can burn some things directly to DVD or move it to my wife's ipod if the protect bit is not set. Other programming can only be viewed on the TiVo directly. This summer they will be releasing a TiVo that does HDTV on top of all that. We are less than six months from netflix doing away with those envelopes and sending you your movies via your network and set top box. By the time the next olympics roll around, PPV will be entirely different than it is now.


I think that the reason the olympics are tanking is simply that coverage stinks. The announcers don't seem to understand the events they are covering. The network can't schedule coverage and keep to that coverage. And despite the efforts of the announcers, not every event is the grand sporting triumph of the century for the americans. My understanding is that they tried to compare at least three of the hockey events to the miracle on ice. They can't just appreciate a hockey game as a hockey game, and cover the event that is actually happening. And they don't have to cover every last run on the skeleton, for example, but they do have to show more the the american atheletes.

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

I also think that the coverage sucks overall. First off, half of the stuff is on a time delay so you're not actually watching it live. Secondly, you're actually watching the commercials with occasional breaks for Olympics.

But I do agree that the US is getting more sedentary and there is the money factor. If you want to be competitive in figure skating or gymnastics, you've got to shell out the $$$ for the right coaches and be members of the right schools to even have a shot.

In the equestrian events, it's all about money, which puts it out of range for the vast majority of people. It used to be that you could get a decent horse for relatively cheap and train it to Olympic level, esp. in eventing. Now, it's become a breed game and people who have the most money can afford to buy Olympic champions which your average backyard horse can't begin to compete with, no matter how much training you've got.

On the bright side, I was reading online the other day that Verizon sponsors try-outs for bobsled and skeleton. They are looking for track atheletes and if you make the cut, they will ship you off to training camps and provide all your equipment. I wondered how people got into bobsledding. Home Depo has a program that will give you a flexible 20 hour a week job but pay you full-time if you are training. Not a bad deal either.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

can you break away from work to see the 8pm Italian time figure skating at 2pm?

whether you Tivo it or NBC assembles a cut, you're still going to have a time-delay.

it'll be worse in 2010 in Vancouver - 8pm events will be on at 11pm on the east coast, so when does NBC decide to actually show it? Will they run them live (lose ratings and be forced to show a lot of crappy runs along with the good ones) or will they make a cut and show it prime time the next day (by which time, its old news, as the Today Show morning coverage will already have had to spoil it with interviews with the winners)?

The '84 Olympics really hurt the ratings game because of losing the east coast on the highlight events (our last time with a decent Men's gymnastics team for 20 years) which were run live at 11pm eastern time, running well into 3am for some competitions.

There really is no choice - the amount of people who can break away from work and watch it live (and endure the crappy runs to get to the good ones, and for that matter, would be willing to do so) is so small simply isn't financially viable for a network to do that in this country.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

They still have to learn how to ride the horse (witness the Japanese who bought a $500,000 stallion to compete in Barcelona in dressage ... it didn't help their score when the horse jumped out of the ring).

Actually, Dressage is the biggie for "Breed Rules". Show jumping has horses from all breeds because it is not at all arbitrary. Does the horse get over the fence. Yes, certain breeds are showing up more and more and to some extent, certain types of horse are being selected for by the course designer (stride length being a BIG factor).

With Combined Training, you can still do fairly well with a backyard horse IF you select it carefully. The change in the roads-tracks rules will change things some but I think a backyard OTT TB cross with something with brains and substance will still give you a good horse. I know someone who has an el cheapo auction App QH that she bred to an RID for her next competition horse (the App QH will be going back to work when the foal is weaned). Well she make the Olympics with either horse? Not likely but not due to lack of horse, more lack of desire to compete at that level. She wants to make it to Intermediate eventually.

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

Combined training is favoring the big warmbloods because the jumps are getting bigger and more complicated to deal with the shorter courses. I remember watching it 20 years ago and thinking, "those jumps aren't that bad. I could do that," and now I look at the courses and think, "Insanity."

Fortunately, the "baroque" horses like Andulusians, Lippanzaner, and Iberians are making a comeback. People are finding that horses with long backs and gorgeous extended trots tend to blow their hocks and suspensories out whereas horses that have good collection tend to stay sound longer. Invasor, an Andulusian on the Spanish team, competed at 16 at the last Olympics and it was his 3rd Olympics. I don't know of any warmbloods that could have done that.

Anyway, the sport will die a miserable death if "normal" people think they can't compete. It's bad enough that it takes many years to train a dressage horse and rider. For less time and just as much money, you could buy a champion hunter and clean up in the show ring. This is why there are far more hunter types than dressage types. :)

[dawntreader]

FWIW, if i didn't have a DVD-recorder, i'd be watching the Olympics and catching up with American Idol later. i find it preferable to record the Olympics and watch, FF, and RW at my leisure where i don't need to do that with American Idol.

hopefully that says SOMETHING about my priorities being at least near the right place. ;)

my best friend on the other hand, TiVo's Survivor, American Idol, and Olympics all three because she doesn't want to miss out!

it's an interesting point though, about "reality" TV and the real reality of sports. kind of scary. like WWF vs. Wrestling. some people want to imagine the entertainment is the real sport.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

you know, for one-shot things where quality doesn't mean anything, VCRs are still just as good as tivo/dvd-r.

[dawntreader]

i know they are and we have both, but quality isn't my priority. i just like the chapter-skipping and easy-erase features with the DVD-RW.

it's also not QUITE the same quality depending on the hours jammed into a single DVD. in that case, six hours on a video-cassette is better than the pixellated 6 hours jammed on a DVD. but otherwise, i can't fit an entire Olympic broadcast on a DVD if i don't set the minimum to 4 or 6 hours.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

but why bother with a VCR? It doesn't do anything that tivo doesn't. We have a VCR, but I don't think we own a tape. I'm not sure, because we haven't had cause to use it. I don't even know if it has a power cord, it just sits there on top of the TiVo, making it's ironic statement.

I know some people who still have VCRs, but I don't understand why.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, we have the vcr 'cause we haven't had the time to look at a tivo yet... :)

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

While watching the Men's US-Canada curling game yesterday, it was noted several times that at least in Newfoundland where most of the team is from, things ground to a halt while people watched the match. Most other countries I know of that have limited TV channels to begin with, show nothing but the Olympics LIVE and I assume, repeats during prime time.

Personally, I think it's really rude of the other networks to compete with the Olympics. I'm sure the American Idol would easily beat out the State of the Union address but all the networks show it. So why not with the Olympics? It's an international event.

The problem is that the networks aren't about providing people news anymore, it's all about ratings. Networks make money hand over fist yet they can't be generous enough to show a couple of weeks of the world's elite atheletes competing.

Oh as far as weeding through the "bad" runs to get to the good ones, you never know which ones are going to be the good ones. If you only wanted to watch Bode, you would have been sorely disappointed this Olympics. The fun is watching everyone, regardless of how well they do.

[dawntreader]

American Idol has followed the same schedule for the last five years. this just happens to coincide with an Olympic year.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

historically, the olympics were such a ratings hit that the (2) alternate networks ran reruns rather than tried to actively compete.

that started to drop after '80 summer games, when we didn't have olympics ('cause we boycotted them), and reached the permanent dropping point when Fox came in and said "f-you" to ALL the networks by competing for blood at all times.

if it works, then ALL the networks have to try it. failure to do so is to give up income and that affects shareholder value and that is illegal in this country.

[melydia.livejournal.com]

that started to drop after '80 summer games

Yeah, "OMG nobody's watching the Olympics" is old news. Have they taken a steeper dip this year? As someone who hasn't watched the Olympics since the 80s (I don't like televised sports in general), I haven't heard anything that makes this year's ratings sound markedly worse than previous years.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

yes, actually, they are, and losing to American Idol badly on every time they are oppposite each other.

[melydia.livejournal.com]

I can believe that. I don't watch American Idol either, but I can see its appeal. It's not curling, for one thing. Every time I've browsed past the Olympics for the last week it's been curling.

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

Curling is cool. :) And like hockey, it's a round-robin tournament so there are a lot of games to cover. I don't understand why NBC will air syndicated re-runs instead of live coverage of an event and then do the prime-time re-runs in the evening. I'd think that their ratings would be slightly higher in the daytime with the Olympics and people will still watch at night as well.

OT

[thatwasjen]

So why does AI keep pre-empting House?

Re: OT

[dawntreader]

it didn't!!! i was so pissed! it was on MONDAY this week so we missed it yet AGAIN. :P

i hate it when they do that. take a perfectly good show in a perfectly good timeslot, and move them all over the place. Bones comes back in two more weeks on Wednesdays and i don't know where House will be. we'll have to keep our eye on the listings to catch it. that makes three epis of House that we've missed this season. GRR.

on a side note, did you see Hugh Laurie was on David Letterman this week? i don't know what night it was/is, but i saw the ad for it.

Re: OT

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

money. duh. ;-)

Actually, reality TV is eventually going to put the networks on to the "British" model soon. Instead of trying to fill out a 24-26 week season (with most episodes repeated once to fill out a 52 week year), they're going to go to the "8pm tuesday is reality night" - run 6-8 weeks of show 1, then 6-8 weeks of show 2, then 6-8 weeks of show 3, etc (with potential summer reruns of the best show). what's going to make that possible is the network that does it is going to fight to start to get rid of the "sweeps week" concept. we have realtime statistics for viewership, we don't need "sweeps" anymore to tell us what people are watching and/or want to see more of.

and you can bet that Fox will be the network to start to bring the end of "sweeps week".

Re: OT

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

Yay. I hate sweeps week. It's endless reruns until the new eps. Then again, I get bummed with only a 6-8 series. Just as I get into a show, it's over.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

in today's soundbyte driven America, you're very much an extreme exception. Probably less than 3% of the country can do that. ratings or not, it is not financially viable to cater to only 3% of the country when you have the expectation (by your advertisers) to get at minimum 20% (and at ideal, 50%).

the costs of the production simply will not be made up for in advertising revenue because the revenue is based on the viewership.

"generosity" be damned: the total losses for the half-week of non-commercial 9/11 coverage cost the networks more than the airlines lost in the subsequent month. It'll take a lot more than the olympics to get a network to do that again.

and "elite" is exactly the problem i've already defined: nobody in america gives a damn about the "elite" anymore: in fact, they actively resent them.

[kowari.livejournal.com]

As someone trying to become "elite", I can pretty much tell you why TV ratings are down on this type of thing...

No one can relate anymore. And I believe it is almost what you said before - reality TV, but not quite for the reasons you said.

I remember back in the 80's when sports was at its peak, wide world of sports was the best TV show in the world and the olympics were a dream and something to inspire you. You wantecd to be the person at the olympics on the TV. You were inspired to try, and inspired to do the work (which, trust me, is REALLY HARD)

These days, with reality TV our heros are the Common Man (as opposed to the Theme for the Common Man). We can dream about being on reality TV, and it is achievable without any/much effort. So, why bother with the Olympic/Elite sports dream? It's much easier to become famous by reality TV. It's the throwaway, remote control, reality TV world we live in. It is why there are more obese people than ever before, why we worry about heart conditions, diabetes, cholesterol. We want to look fit, but are not prepared to put in the hard yakka to BE fit. Lazy society. I hate it.

BRING BACK THE OLYMPIC DREAM!!!! 8^(

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really like this theory, and think it has merit.

Why am I not watching the Olympics? Because last several times I did, there were 6 minutes of commercials to 4 minutes of "Let us spin melodramatic tales about our athletes instead of showing you who's competing from around the world" followed by 6 more minutes of commercials followed by 3 minutes of actual competition during which the announcers would *NOT* STFU so that you could actually concentrate on the event! And then it was usually events I couldn't give a rat's ass about; aside from ice skating, the stuff I want to see gets short strift. Did you know that a few Olympics back the USA won the archery gold by a single point on the last arrow, as the stadium literally rocked from competing chants of "USA! USA!" and "Ko-re-a! Ko-re-a!" Of course not, because exciting as that was, the networks only showed a 5-second clip of a single release by our guy. Not even a picture of a target.

At least this time I've discovered that the curling on cable is both interesting, not punctuated by overlong commercial blocks, and not overlaid with yapping announcers. Huzzah for that!

Even Dancing with the Stars, overpadded as it is, gives you a little bit of background on everyone, discusses how the (bogus) rankings work, and does not interrupt routines with either commercials or chatter.