On the Olympics and Ratings...
Feb. 23rd, 2006 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearOlympic Idols:
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...
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...
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-23 04:15 pm (UTC)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.