NBCU’s Olympics Ratings Well Ahead of World Record Pace
More Than 143 Million Viewers Tune In Through First Three Days
By Multi Channel News Staff -- Multichannel News, 8/11/2008 11:16:00 AM MT
More than 107 million people watched NBC’s telecast of the Beijing Olympics Sunday, making it the most-watched first Sunday in Summer Olympics history, network officials said Monday.
Eighty-one million Americans watched NBC in primetime as swimming superstar Michael Phelps (pictured) and his USA teammates won the gold medal in the 4x100 freestyle relay in dramatic fashion Sunday night.
NBCU officials also said more than 1 million streams of the race have been accessed on demand at NBCOlympics.com.
Through the first three days of the Olympics, more than 143 million viewers have tuned into the network’s multichannel coverage, up 17 million from the first three days of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
NBC's Beijing Olympic three-day average viewership is 30.4 million, 6 million more than Athens in 2004 (24.0 million). The national rating average of 17.0/30 is the best primetime rating through the first Sunday for a non-U.S. Summer Olympics since Montreal in 1976 (18.1/43) and is a 21 percent jump from Athens in 2004 (14.1/26).
Sunday night's 31.7 million average viewers bested Athens by 6 million viewers (25.8) and earned a 17.9 rating/31 share, a 16 percent jump from Athens in 2004 (15.4/26).
NBCOlympics.com on MSN drew more than 66.7 million page views, 5.1 million unique users and more than 3.4 million video streams Sunday.
Through three days NBCOlympics.com has totaled 199.3 million page views. By the day's end NBCOlympics.com will have already surpassed the total page views for the entire 2004 Athens Games (229.9 million).
NBCOlympics.com's total video streams to date are 11.1 million, which is five times more than the total for the entire Athens Games (2.2 million). The top five video streams Monday on the site are:
1. U.S. Wins 4x100m Relay
2. Beijing and Beyond Feature
3. Phelps wins 400m IM
4. Women's Fencing - Foil
5. U.S.-China Basketball preview
NBCU’s Olympics Juggernaut Winds to a Close
08/22/2008
