UPDATE FEBRUARY 25, 2022:
NEW YORK (AP) — NBC will be happy to put the Beijing Winter Olympics in the rear-view mirror, as the event had a record low viewership for an American audience and the Olympics. The games reached an average combined audience of 11.4 million in prime time on NBC, cable and the Peacock streaming service. Those numbers are down 42 percent from the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018. A lack of buzz for the Olympics, held half a world today in an authoritarian country with COVID-19 restrictions, kept large numbers of viewers away. But in a diminished TV world, the Olympics still did better than anything other than pro football this season.
FEBRUARY 8, 2022:
UNDATED (AP)- NBC’s Mike Tirico began the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics by saying “just over six months ago in Tokyo, we said we were about to embark on an Olympics unlike any other. Now we’re about to top that.” But in the case of ratings topping that has meant producing record lows. NBC is on track for the lowest-rated Winter Games in history through the first four nights of competition. The coverage Friday night (Feb. 4, 2022) on NBC, USA Network and Peacock averaged 12.8 million viewers. That is significantly down from the 27.8 million average in Pyeongchang four years ago. The audience of 8 million on Thursday night marked the smallest primetime Olympics audience on record.
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