NBC’s 2024 Paris Olympics Coverage Is Worthy of a Gold Medal
Photo Courtesy of NBC
The XXXIII Olympiad is in full swing and for fans of the Games, the focus has been on the intense competition between the athletes. However, there’s another group that’s feeling just as much pressure as the men and women competing in the Olympics: the executives sitting in the NBC C-Suite.
The 2021 Tokyo Games saw NBC viewership drop significantly. According to Nielsen, the average primetime audience for Tokyo was 15.1 million compared to 25.8 million for Rio (2016) and 31.1 million for London (2012). And Peacock, which launched in July of 2020 and was meant to be a hub for Olympic content, wasn’t podium ready. With Comcast, who owns NBCUniversal, paying $7.65 billion for the right to broadcast the Olympics through 2032, the company wants to demonstrate it invested well. Thankfully, the 2024 Games is shaping up to do just that.
In a recent podcast interview with Puck News’ Matt Belloni, NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus said he wanted Paris Olympics coverage to be “less about school and more about fun,” and, so far, NBC has delivered on that goal. NBC’s coverage hasn’t just been fun, however, it’s so comprehensive that it’s made the 2024 Summer Games the most accessible in Olympic history. Here’s a look at where NBC coverage has earned gold, silver, and bronze medals.
GOLD
Peacock (with ads)
I’ve loved the Olympics since I was a kid and never had the ability to watch as many events as I have during these Games. This summer, Peacock is streaming 5,000 hours of Olympic programming and all 329 medal events. Best of all, everything is right at your fingertips, and it’s easy to find whatever you want. You can add future events to your My Stuff list, watch highlights of the day’s events, see an up to date medal count, and watch replays of anything you might have missed. Peacock has been a phenomenal Olympic host, in part due to some features listed below that deserve their own gold medal.
– Gold Zone: An Olympic version of NFL RedZone that features 10 hours of live coverage daily, Gold Zone is sports TV for the TikTok era. During one 30-minute segment, I watched judo, cycling, gymnastics, handball, basketball, boxing, and canoe slalom. It was awesome! Rapid shifts from one sport to another provide variety, never let you miss a big moment, and pop ups let you go to full coverage if you see a sport you want to stick with.
– Multiview: A companion to Gold Zone is Multiview, where you can watch up to four events at once. This is a more customizable version of Gold Zone, as you can choose to Multiview one particular sport (i.e. tennis) or whatever top events are happening when you’re on Peacock’s Olympic hub. You can easily switch the audio to whatever you’re most interested in or watch full coverage with a click of a button.
– AI Al Michaels: Only available on the Peacock app via a smartphone, tablet, or web browser is Your Daily Olympic Recap, a 10-minute summary of the previous day’s events hosted by the AI-generated voice of sportscasting legend Al Michaels. This fully customizable feature, where you choose the events to have Michaels report on, is astounding. It works seamlessly, perfectly blending AI-Al’s voice with highlights and mixes in some video clips for good measure. If you want to see the potential of artificial intelligence and how it can be used in sports broadcasting, Your Daily Olympic Recap is a good place to start.
