Oh, hey, the Olympics are here.
They kind of snuck up on us, what with all the political news of the past month. (Can you believe that the first presidential debate was still less than a month ago?)
The Paris Games technically are already underway. There were a bunch of events held on Thursday. But today they officially get underway with the opening ceremonies.
NBC is the American television host for the Games and events will be aired on NBC, Peacock, USA Network, E!, CNBC, Golf Channel, Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Universo, NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app. Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, will have 5,000 hours of coverage — showing every event in every sport.
For a complete program, check out this day-by-day schedule from The Washington Post.
Unless you’re an Olympic diehard, you’ll probably watch like the majority of those who tune in — prime-time coverage on the weekdays and, maybe, a little more on the weekends. Because of the six-hour time difference between Paris and the U.S. Eastern time zone, NBC executives will choose which events to feature in prime time.
NBC Olympics producer Rob Hyland told The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch, “Research shows that it is a challenge to keep viewers after 10 p.m. ET. So you’ll see our strategy is to showcase an event or a couple events between about 9:45 and 10:15 p.m. and really keep the audience with us in a very limited commercial break structure in that window. It’s something we’re calling the ‘Event of the Night.’”
Deitsch has an excellent Olympic viewing guide, covering everything from who the announcers will be to NBC’s plans for features and how it might cover news-oriented or political stories.
The big question for NBC, of course, is how many people will watch.
The Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016 drew massive TV audiences — an average of some 27 million viewers in prime time. It helped that the Rio Games were held in a time zone that aligned with the U.S.
But ratings in the U.S. went down significantly for the Olympics since then. The Tokyo Games were supposed to be held in 2020, but got pushed back a year because of COVID-19. The lack of enthusiasm caused by the pandemic, as well as the time differences, made for sluggish TV numbers compared to Rio. An average of about 15.5 million people tuned in during prime time.
The 2022 Winter Games in Beijing also struggled, partly because of negative feelings about China's human rights record, and partly, again, because of time differences.
So what about this year and Paris?
After a relentless political news cycle, are Americans looking for a break? Will they turn to the Olympics as an escape? Or is the suddenly new and fresh race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump too intriguing to turn away from?
The one thing these Games have going for it is the host city.
Deitsch writes, “Paris has a chance to change the trajectory. It’s hard to think of a city with a better aesthetic for a television show, and these Games have ready-made stars scheduled to compete, including Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and LeBron James.”
Deitsch noted that women's sports are on the upswing, adding, “NBC obviously won’t come close to Rio — that world is gone — but we should see numbers that match or top Tokyo.”
I’m skeptical. For starters, the Olympics just don’t have the same cachet as they used to have. And, maybe because there has been so much political news, the buzz for these Olympics seems to be lacking.
Perhaps, however, the Games will catch some momentum and then ride the stars — Biles, Ledecky, the basketball teams — for solid numbers.
If nothing else, it will give us a break from politics for a couple of weeks.
The opening ceremony will be aired live today starting at noon Eastern. NBC will then air the opening ceremony again in prime time, starting at 7:30 Eastern. It will be hosted by Mike Tirico, Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson. The closing ceremony will be on Aug. 11.
Media news, tidbits and interesting links for your weekend review …
- Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump appears to be “backpedaling” on a Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News, but that she’s ready for it. Trump has said he is willing to debate Harris, but also has said he didn’t like the idea of debating her on ABC. Late Thursday, a Trump campaign spokesperson said it would be “inappropriate” to commit to a debate until the Democrats officially name a nominee at the Democratic National Convention next month. (The spokesperson actually suggested the Democrats might change their minds about Harris being the nominee.) Originally, Trump agreed to a Sept. 10 debate on ABC, but that was before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Harris said, “I think that voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage, and so I’m ready. Let’s go.”
- The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan with “Trump and His Allies Adapt to a New Role: Fighting for Attention.”
- The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Taylor Lorenz, Justine McDaniel and María Luisa Paul with “An online army rises, this time on Kamala Harris’s side.”
- The Atlantic’s Xochitl Gonzalez with “What the Kamala Harris Doubters Don’t Understand.”
- Vanity Fair’s Joy Press with “Inside Kamala Harris’s Loyal Circle of Hollywood Friends.”
- If you are a regular user of X, you should read this story. The New York Times’ Kate Conger with “Elon Musk Wants People on X to Police Election Posts. It’s Not Working Well.” Conger notes that X has Community Notes, which lets a group of users write fact-checking labels and vote on whether they are helpful. However, Conger points out that Community Notes are inconsistent. Conger quotes my colleague Alex Mahadevan, the director of MediaWise, Poynter's media literacy program. Mahadevan told Conger, “If they truly want to rely on Community Notes to root out political misinformation, it will not work. We’re so polarized that nobody can agree anymore.”
- The Los Angeles Times’ Christi Carras with “Video game actors are going on strike after contract talks fail over AI terms.”
- For The Atlantic, Anna Nemtsova with “Evan Gershkovich’s Soviet-Era Show Trial.”
- For The New York Times Magazine, Mark O’Connell with “John Hinckley Jr. and the Madness of American Political Violence.”
- I generally don’t like “oral histories,” mostly because they so rarely speak to enough pertinent people to make it a true oral history. But this one is different. This one does talk to plenty of the notable voices to make it worthwhile. For The Ringer, Matthew Jacobs with “‘You Gotta Hear This One Song’: The Oral History of the ‘Garden State’ Soundtrack.”
More resources for journalists
- Get an AI ethics framework for your newsroom. Start here.
- Will Work for Impact brings investigations to life.
- Public media journalists: attend our Digital Transformation Project Q&A webinar Aug. 13.
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].
