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Bob Costas has a training program he undertakes before every Olympics. In the weeks and months leading up to the opening ceremonies, the veteran NBC broadcaster does an inordinate amount of reading. Even in the sporting world, where commentators are known for their ability to regurgitate the most arcane facts and figures, Mr. Costas stands out. Legend has it he once left a $3.31 tip at baseball legend Stan Musial's St. Louis restaurant – a baffling number, unless you know that the Cardinal's lifetime batting average was .331.
Heading to Beijing, Mr. Costas's pre-Olympic reading has taken him down what would seem like an unusual path: the 1960 Summer Games in Rome. Those Olympics were many things: Cassius Clay won gold there and the first modern-day doping scandal unfolded. But there's another reason 1960 has captivated those at NBC.
When CBS paid what seemed like a huge sum – $600,000 – for the broadcast rights to those games, Rome became the first commercially televised Olympics, giving way to what is now a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide. Mr. Costas is one of many at NBC pinning their hopes on the promise that these Olympics, beginning in less than two weeks, will be just as significant for the Peacock Network. “It remains to be seen how these Beijing Olympics might change the world,” Mr. Costas said this week, addressing reporters via satellite from China. “I try to stay away from hype and overstatement.”
His bosses at NBC were far less circumspect, declaring the 17-day event “the most ambitious single media project in history.” The network will generate 3,600 hours of coverage spread across multiple TV channels, the Internet, cellphones, and cable video-on-demand platforms. It will also be the first Games shown entirely in high-definition, right down to the tiny lipstick tube cameras stuck in the archery targets.
A performer plays a drum during a rehearsal of a show featuring the Olympic mascots in Beijing.
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At a time when network TV has seen its audiences splintered by the Internet, these Games represent network television's biggest effort to reverse that trend and reclaim lost viewers. But NBC's push comes as there are several fires to contend with. Demographics are turning against the big networks as their core audiences get older, and younger viewers opt to spend time online, a plight that has befallen all mass media, from newspapers to radio. And the role of the big networks as a cultural force is increasingly being usurped by upstart cable networks.
Numerous international networks, including CBC and TSN in Canada, have greatly expanded their coverage for Beijing, a function of online advances that have taken place in recent years. But more than anyone, NBC will be using the Games to make a statement about television: that it's not dying.
NBC plans to collect vast amounts of data from these Olympics, using at least five different ratings agencies, and the polling of thousands of viewers, to track how Beijing is consumed each day. It will tell the network how the future TV network needs to conduct itself in an industry where $76-billion worth of advertising is at stake.
“It's not widely known, but the reason NBC bought the 2008 Olympics for $1-billion was not for the programming, but to enable the research guys to go and figure out how people are [consuming] this cross platform stuff,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of research for NBC Universal. He was only half-joking.
“What this really is, is a billion-dollar research lab.”
The actual price paid was $894-million (U.S.), a record for the Games, and NBC will be doing everything to earn that back.
Just over an hour of footage aired each night from those Rome Olympics. NBC will churn out an average of 212 hours of content a day from Beijing, most of it available on-demand online. At that rate, it would take one person watching nine screens around the clock to consume it all.
“I think we may look back and see this was a very seminal time,” Mr. Wurtzel said.
Demographic shift
A little more than a month before Beijing – the Games begin on Aug. 8 – network television was dealt some unsettling news. The television viewer is getting older, and none of the major U.S. networks are escaping the trend.
The median age for the big networks – the point at which exactly half their audience is younger and half their audience is older, is now just one year shy of 50.
While mass media has all experienced an aging of its audience, with newspapers and radio being hit particularly hard, the demographic shifts for TV have proven the networks are no different. According to a study by Magna, a New York advertising and research agency, CBS has the oldest viewership, with a median age of 53, followed by ABC and NBC at 49 and 48, respectively. FOX, the home of younger-skewing programs, has seen its number rise from 34 to 43 in the past five years.
