In 30 days, NBC Sports will get the ball rolling on what is shaping up to be the first “normal” Summer Olympics since the London Games lit up the Nielsen dials way back in 2012. But as much as the myriad cataclysms of Tokyo and Rio have receded in the rearview mirror, ratings watchers may want to cool it with the inevitable comparisons between this year’s event and the one from 12 years ago.
For one thing, the media landscape has changed so profoundly since the Games of the XXX Olympiad that there’s no way to juxtapose the deliveries without falling into the old apples-to-Fiona-Apple trap. For another, NBC’s approach to quantifying the audience consumption will be unlike anything advertisers have ever seen.
As Jorge De La Rosa noted today during NBC’s Olympics preview presentation at 30 Rock’s Studio 8H, the company will combine the results of a new 2 p.m.-5 p.m. EDT daypart with the numbers from its traditional primetime window, an effort that will fuse live coverage deliveries with the recaps and narrative pieces that will comprise the bulk of the 8 p.m.-11 p.m. broadcasts.
NBC Sports’ SVP of research divulged that the six blended hours of cross-platform data will be merged to provide advertisers with a “premium content” delivery.
Because the afternoon window coincides with primetime in the City of Lights, NBC will go all-in on live coverage during those three hours. The broadcast flagship and Comcast’s streaming platform, Peacock, will carry all the must-see events from the big three pillars (swimming, gymnastics, track), while the nightly show will bring viewers up to speed on the day’s results. As is customary, NBC’s primetime package will lean heavily on storytelling, as the network endeavors to celebrate the athletes and their families, while helping make the competitors more familiar to an audience largely made up of casual fans.
NBC did not provide an update on the state of its Olympics ad inventory. In April the company indicated that it expected to clear at least $1.25 billion when all is said and done.
While NBC is an old hand at staging an event that gets increasingly more complex with each passing cycle, it’s still getting acclimated to the demands of streaming. Peacock’s coverage of the long-delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics was roundly panned, with the bulk of the consumer complaints having to do with content discovery/search. “We didn’t do a very good job of delivering to our customers,” acknowledged Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group.
To that end, Peacock engineers have improved the user interface in such a way that allows for what president Kelly Campbell billed as “effortless discovery.”
Another new wrinkle is of the uncanny valley variety, as Peacock will be giving Al Michaels, now in an emeritus role at NBC Sports, the AI treatment. As demonstrated earlier this afternoon, Peacock has ginned up an eerily lifelike computer simulation of Michaels’ voice, which will serve as the virtual host of a nightly highlights show constructed around the user’s preferences. The Not-Al was generated by feeding hundreds of hours of the broadcaster’s past work in the Sunday Night Football booth.
Closing out the afternoon, Comcast president and CEO Brian Roberts said that reupping with the Olympics was “probably one of the best decisions we ever made” outside of acquiring NBCU itself. (NBC is paying $7.75 billion for the rights to present the Olympics through the 2032 Games.) As other execs suggested throughout the presentation, NBC is hoping that the events in Paris will serve as an agent for bringing people together in a divisive time. “The world could use a great Olympics right now,” Roberts said.
All told, NBC and its siblings will present more than 7,000 hours of coverage from Paris. The Olympics will get under way with an aquatic parade of nations that will wend its way down the Seine on July 26, from 1:30-5 p.m. EDT.
Paris 2024 Olympics Ratings Will Be Unprecedented. Literally
More From Our Brands
Variety
Amber Ruffin Comes Out on the Last Day of Pride: ‘Be Proud of Who You Are’
Rolling Stone
Tyla Performs ‘Jump’ With Gunna, Skillibeng After Best New Artist Win at BET Awards
ArtNews
New Jersey Defunds Centre Pompidou’s Jersey City Museum, Saying Project Is ‘No Longer Viable’
BGR
Netflix’s new Supacell, which has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, shows Marvel how it’s done
SPY