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What in the event that they threw an Olympics and no one watched? NBC execs are discovering out. They have a scores catastrophe on their arms. The community has broadcast the Summer Games since 1988, and the scores have by no means been as dismal as Tokyo 2021.
Over 17 days of competitors NBC’s viewership averaged 12.9 million throughout primetime. That’s down 49 p.c from Rio in 2016 and 58 p.c since London in 2012.
NBC Sports chairman Pete Bevacqua mentioned the community was “thrown a series of curveballs over the last 18 months” because the coronavirus pandemic delayed the video games by a yr, forcing the Olympics to go on in empty stadiums and provoke extensively criticized protocols. In addition, a wide range of high-profile athletes needed to bow out after testing optimistic.
And NBC itself screwed up:
Potential viewers additionally complained about occasions being onerous to seek out on an assortment of viewing choices, confusion about streaming service Peacock, and a big time distinction inflicting main occasions to air on tape delay throughout an period when cellular alerts and social media make spoilers inevitable.
And then there’s the politics. All the discuss in the weeks main as much as the video games about whether or not the IOC would permit political protests and what type drove away viewers — simply as NBA and NFL followers have been repulsed by the Black Lives Matter grandstanding.
Related: A Drunken Legacy: USA’s Olympic Basketball Champs Were Smashed On Team Bus
U.S. hammer thrower Gwen Berry had a tantrum when she was subjected to the nationwide anthem on the rostrum throughout a qualifier final month. The USWNT began the video games by kneeling (and dropping). The opening ceremonies inflicted John Lennon’s insipid communist anthem “Imagine” on viewers, and we have been handled to the farce of the IOC pretending it was okay {that a} New Zealand man competed in a ladies’s weightlifting competitors.
Still, NBC did its greatest to rescue the state of affairs by having the closing ceremonies lined by somebody all viewers can relate to. This man.
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