Television ratings for the 2024 Paris games are way up compared to the Tokyo Olympics.
The excitement of crowds that were absent during the Covid-delayed Tokyo games probably have something to do with that, as does the time change improvement that sees most major events happening live in the morning and afternoon in the U.S. instead of overnight.
The time change, paired with more people working from home, has led to another 2024 phenomenon: previously unheard of daytime ratings for live Olympic events.
From the Associated Press last week:
The time difference — Paris is six hours ahead of the Eastern time zone — is ideal for people who want to watch events live during the day in the United States. NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said the network is heartened by the number of people watching during what is generally the workday back home; NBC is even happily taking credit for dwindled workplace productivity.
Live daytime coverage of the women’s gymnastics team final reached 12.7 million people on NBC and Peacock, the network said. Even though it started on a Sunday morning, the U.S. men’s basketball team had 11 million people watching its opening game against Serbia, more than the number of people who saw the gold-medal game from Tokyo.
ARLnow has seen several impacts from live daytime Olympic coverage.
First, we’ve noticed a pronounced dip in readership during weekday afternoons last week, which cannot be fully explained by vacations and the slower summertime news cycle.
Second, we’ve seen our coverage of local Olympian Torri Huske get some pushback from readers upset about breaking news alerts spoiling their viewing of NBC’s tape delayed primetime Olympic lineup.
I subscribe to many sports things (newsletters, etc.). @ARLnowDOTcom is the only publication dumb enough to push Olympic spoilers in the subject lines of their daytime emails for events in prime time coverage. Do better. https://t.co/RwYW7c0pHB
— Allison Kasic (@allisonkasic) August 3, 2024
With another week of the Paris games to go, today we’re wondering: how many ARLnow readers have been watching the Olympics live during the day or tape delayed at night?
