Well, it’s all over.
After 19 days of exciting wins, painful losses and a lot of Snoop Dogg, the 2024 Summer Olympics have come to an end.
Now that all the medals have been awarded, we need to shift focus leave From athletes to a more important topic (at least to us):
Of course, we’re talking about the TV viewing experience.
Did NBC deliver gold coverage?
Olympic ratings are pretty reliable in most years, which is why NBC is willing to spend $7.65 billion to buy the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States through 2032.
Of course, there are more entertainment options than ever before, and with the exception of NFL football, sports aren’t as attractive to TV viewers as they once were.
That’s one reason the network is protecting its investment with content designed to attract viewers beyond the usual demographic of live sports.
NBC reportedly spent $50 million for all these celebrity cameos, with Snoop receiving $500,000 a day.
Many TV critics and media outlets wrote that this year’s coverage was an improvement over previous broadcasts (although to be fair, that’s a pretty low bar).
But it’s worth noting that someone who writes professionally about sports media may have access to all NBC platform. They can invest more time in these things than the average audience.
Perhaps it’s for this reason that people at Vulture have a very different audience experience than the average Reddit user.
Many viewers found NBC’s coverage riddled with holes, complaining about everything from constant product push to difficulty keeping track of live event schedules.
Olympic-sized disappointment?
“N(n)B(ut)C(ad)…back after these messages,” one amateur commentator wrote on Reddit this week.
“Compared to Canadian and UK broadcasts this is a damn joke (no…I don’t want to subscribe to the damn Peacock (newsflash, they have ads too, it’s just that their ads are randomly placed.)”
To many viewers, NBC’s celebrity-centric approach was all wrong.
“This is disgusting, low-grade garbage,” another Reddit user wrote. “I don’t care about Flavor Flav, Snoop Dogg or Tom Cruise!! Highlight the athletes!
“They worked so hard to get here and the commentators make me want to throw the TV at the wall. They called Simone Biles an ‘entertainer’ WTF!!
Obviously, these are just the opinions of two random viewers, but similar sentiments were echoed from all corners of the social media sphere.
NBC clearly sees this year’s competition as a great opportunity to drive viewers to its emerging streaming service, Peacock.
They used a similar strategy during last year’s NFL season, offering coverage of the Kansas City Chiefs-Miami Dolphins playoff game exclusively to paying subscribers.
NBC’s Peacock Problem
Peacock has a free trial, but NBCUniversal executives hope new users will get hooked on their library of content or simply forget to cancel.
The problem is, as one of the newer streamers, Peacock’s library isn’t as large as what you’d find on Netflix or Max.
and the original program it Do The quality of the quotes is extremely inconsistent.
The service recently committed its biggest budget yet to the ancient Rome series The Dying Man, but so far critical and public response has been equally disappointing.
The risk, expense, and uncertainty involved in developing the next hit series means streaming executives are likely to double down on more of the approaches we’re seeing so far:
Take a favorite, established viewing experience, like the NFL or the Olympics, and ask viewers to pay for something they previously got for free.
For obvious reasons, this isn’t a strategy that’s going to win much favor with consumers.
Subscribers who pay to watch their favorite team’s playoff games likely do so reluctantly and reluctantly.
In this case, they probably won’t be excited about the prospect of watching a new season of “Poker Face” in favor of NBC.
In fact, when they find out that Peacock’s entry level still requires them to watch commercial breaks, they may decide that they’re already paying for enough streaming.
Snoopy is charismatic and the Olympics are fun, but being asked to pay for commercial-filled television in the modern era is an insult that even the most resilient competitor should not be asked to bear.
