Olympic Opening Ceremonies Show Strong Ratings
So, what did you think of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies Friday in Beijing? Did you find them cool and moving, or basically a collection of funny cliches, or an international disgrace?
If you look at what people have said over on Twitter the last two days, opinions are completely random, and a picture over at Kids’ Health Notes is a prime example of the details that people caught.
The one thing that is indisputable is that people watched, and it’s become a two-year tradition for Americans to sit down and enjoy them in our own ways. And if you think of it, Americans have few traditions like this beyond the Super Bowl.
NBC released a statement Saturday that said their coverage of the Beijing ceremony was the best overnight rating ever for non-U.S. Olympic Opening Ceremony, drawing 21.5 million viewers and a 37 share between 8-11:19 p.m. In 1996, the Opening Ceremony in Atlanta had 27.2 million viewers and a 47 share. So while the key demo’s dropping, the numbers this year are still impressive.
Additionally, NBCOlympics.com saw its most traffic ever on Friday with 70 million page views. NBC said that’s 10 times more than the seven million page views on the opening day of the Athens Games. Of course, look back at how many more people have broadband and watch streaming video now than four years ago and that’s only logical.
But it’s undeniable that even with the Olympics being held in a country that has been an advasary to the United States since the Cold War, Americans ate up all the Chinese pagentry and the cheesy outfits. It will be interesting to see if the U.S. ratings for some of the most popular Olympic sports like gymnastics and basketball hold up against preseason football and special ABC promos for the “Wipeout Games”.
One more note: I have not found any numbers yet on what happened at 11:30 P.M. last night, when the John Edwards “I did it, and I’m sorry” interview on “Nightline” aired. ABC was very, very careful to keep that from leaking early, so some folks had to make a tough choice on whether to stick around to see early competition coverage or Edwards sweating it out on ABC.
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