NBC will turn out daily audience metrics for the 17 days of the Summer Olympics, according to
Media Week. The numbers will include TV, online, mobile and video-on-demand ratings for the Games, scheduled for Aug. 8-24.
The model is a test bed for future measurements, the publication said. If the Olympics experiment goes well, NBC will implement multiplatform ratings for its fall prime-time TV season.
Quantcast, a Web traffic measurement outfit based in San Francisco, has been tapped to keep tabs on the traffic at NBCOlympics.com, where the network will stream video of the Games. Another company, Knowledge Networks of Menlo Park, Calif., will monitor 8,500 Web surfers who watch the Olympics online. Specially equipped cell phones will be used to monitor mobile consumption of swimming and tumbling. All platforms will be subject to a survey on ad awareness.
The Peacock net is shooting the moon this year on the Games with more than 3,600 hours of coverage--the most ever done, and according to an NBC press release, “the most ambitious single media project in history.” The Games will be spread across the various NBC Universal nets, including NBC, USA, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Telemundo and Universal HD. NBCOlympics.com will carry 2,200 hours of live coverage, a first for U.S. audiences. Of the 3,600-hour telecast on the TV networks, 2,900 hours of it will be live.
Dick Ebersol is chairman of NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, and executive producer of NBCU’s Olympics coverage.
“In the 41 years since my first Olympics, it’s staggering to me to be involved in a Games where we are producing 2,900 hours of live coverage--especially from an Olympics half-a-world away,” he said. “It’s more live coverage from a single Olympics than the total of all previous Summer Olympics combined. The enormity of what we’re doing just blows me away.”
NBC offered the following factoids on the upcoming Beijing Games:
--Between CBS’s 20 hours of coverage in Rome in 1960, and 1,210 hours of the Athens Games by NBCU in 2004, the 12 Summer Olympics broadcasts have totaled 2,562 hours, less than the total live hours planned from Beijing.
--Over the 17 days of the Beijing Games, NBCU coverage will average more than 212 hours per day.
--NBCU will broadcast the entire Beijing Olympic Games entirely in high definition, a first for a U.S. broadcaster at a Summer Olympics.
--The Beijing Games represents the 11th Olympics broadcast by NBC, the most Olympic broadcasts by any U.S. network.
-- In addition to the 3,600 hours, NBCU is also providing coverage of the entire men’s and women’s soccer and basketball tournaments through specialty channels.
