The Tokyo Olympics hit NBC’s lowest audience ever; Tank closing ceremony – deadline

NBC will probably never admit it, but the Comcast-owned network must be so relieved that the Tokyo Olympics are finally over.

A little more than 24 hours after the end of the 17 days of the delayed pandemic of the Games of the XXXII Olympiad, the network is trying to give a touch of gold to the losing results. Insisting that their dominance of the small screen and their streaming data over the past two weeks were the winners, NBC also revealed that they have averaged 15.5 million prime-time viewers since the lackluster ceremony. opening July 23.

Now, in the current era of declining viewership and looking at 2021 so far, 15.5 million looks pretty impressive.

Until you watch past Olympics and realize that the Tokyo Games were the worst result NBC has had since they started broadcasting the Summer Olympics in 1988 from Seoul, South Korea .

Focusing on the last summer Olympics, organized prime-time coverage of the Tokyo Olympics crashed to 42% compared to Rio 2016, which was held August 5-21 of the year. same year. Held a year later than expected, the Tokyo Olympics were also down 22% from the last Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea in 2018 – which is a real kick on the podium .

Now, embroiled in Covid controversy, fears and restrictions unimagined before, the Tokyo Olympics saw America lead in medal count with 113 overall and 39 gold in second place, respectively. 88 and 36 for China. However, due to a lack of spectators in stadiums and other venues, mainly masked participants from 205 delegations and the Refugee Olympic team found themselves competing at the 2020 Olympics in 2021, with the Beijing Winter Games on their heels. with its debut on February 4.

Yet, having to appease advertisers because the audience often did not meet expectations, NBC persevered on all its platforms and points of sale until the closing ceremony yesterday.

Held much earlier today live in the nearly empty National Stadium in the Japanese megalopolis, the pre-recorded and sculpted prime-time show that Johnny Weir, Terry Gannon and Tara Lipinski put on was perhaps most notable for its transfer to the Paris 2024 games.

Now, that and the terrible hearing he got.

Looking at the first numbers, the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics only attracted 8.8 million viewers for NBC. Now, those quick affiliate results will surely see changes when the final numbers are released tomorrow, but for now, the end of the 2020 Olympics appears to be the least watched closing ceremony ever.

Compared to the official end of the PyeongChang Winter Games in 2018, last night’s event from 8:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. saw a 40 percent drop in viewership. More apples than summer apples, the postponed Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony crashed 48% from the dance festival which was the conclusion of Rio 2016.

NBC can say they won Sunday night against CBS Big Brother and Island of love, animated callbacks on Fox and Major League Baseball on ABC, but really, that’s not much to say – from Tokyo or whatever.

We will update with more Closing Ceremony numbers when we have them. See you on the slopes of Beijing next year and in the City of Light in 2024