2016 Rio Olympics NBC coverage recap
By Collin Giuliani// Staff Writer
Photo by NBCOlympics.com
Leading up to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, NBC stated that these Games would be the “most live Olympics ever.” On all online channels, NBC showed over 5,500 hours of coverage in the first week alone. On top of that, near-daily coverage occurred on 11 channels, including two channels, one for basketball and one for soccer, that were created specifically for the Olympics. The next three Olympic Games are going to take place in Pyeongchang, Tokyo, and Beijing, causing American viewers to be on almost a 12 hour time difference. NBC had an opportunity to live up to their statement this Olympics.
According to an Engadget article, NBC promised to stream “over 4,500 hours of coverage through the NBC Sports app.”
To NBC’s credit, they lived up to their promise, for the most part. Even though the time difference between Eastern Time and Brasilia Summer Time is only one hour, NBC chose to air some events on tape delay, such as the women’s team all-around gymnastics final and the Opening Ceremony. While NBC offered a way to watch every single event live online, their nighttime broadcast consisted of some tape delayed events, which routinely pushed the broadcast past midnight.
One common criticism of NBC was their coverage of the Opening Ceremony, which was tape delayed by one hour and could not be watched live. This tape delay, combined with over an hour of commercials, forced the broadcast to end at 12:27 A.M.
According to an article by Variety, the “tape delayed coverage spanned a whopping four-and-a-half primetime hours.”
Despite the excessive broadcast time, NBC chopped off over 27 minutes of actual ceremony and though the entire Parade of Nations was shown, it was marred by Hoda Kotb making jokes about the country. Instead of offering facts about the Olympians, as John Oliver noted in a segment on “Last Week Tonight,” Hoda was making puns about the name of the country Djibouti.
Another criticism of NBC was their timing of when to air commercials. NBC cut to a commercial break in the middle of live events, or tape delayed event, which is to be expected, but came back at a completely different part of the game. In the middle of a men’s water polo game between the United States and Spain, NBC cut to a commercial break in the middle of the third quarter with the game tied at 7-7. When NBC came back, Spain was up 8-7. In the middle of a women’s beach volleyball match between Ross and Walsh-Jennings of the United States and Forrer and Verge-Depre of Switzerland, the game was shown on tape delay, when NBC cut to a commercial at the end of the second set. When NBC returned, the third set was tied at 7-7, meaning that NBC missed 14 points and returned to the tape delayed event at a different part of the match.
Despite the criticisms of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, there were lots of positives. For one, every event was aired live online. It was possible to watch up to six different events at one time on a laptop without any buffering. Additionally, NBC created an online channel called the Gold Zone. Much like the Red Zone, which is a channel shown during the National Football League season which cuts to the best game happening at the time, the Gold Zone cut to the best live moment of the Olympics. If the Gold Zone was showing a beach volleyball match that cut to a commercial, the channel would switch immediately to another important and exciting live event happening at the time. While the channel only aired for five hours a day, it was a resounding success. This was the first Summer Olympics to use the Gold Zone and based on the response, it will not be the last.
Ken Fang of Awful Announcing stated, “it was a fun watch” and even suggested that NBC could devote one of their regular television channels to the Gold Zone for future Olympic Games.
NBC’s coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympics was better than it was four years ago in London, but there is still work to be done. According to Nielsen, the overnight rating for the Opening Ceremony was a 16.5, which was over a 30 percent drop-off from the Games in London four years ago (23.0 rating) and was the lowest overnight rating for the Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics since the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. The Gold Zone and live event streaming was an incredible success, and NBC has a lot to look forward to as they own the contract for the Olympic Games until 2032.