Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Smith on Rio Broadcast Ratings Being Down (Audio)

Transcript

Smith on Rio Broadcast Ratings Being Down (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is taking stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Fox
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio the Rio Olympics gold medals and swimmers
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: telling stories. But let's not forget us gymnasts as well
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: as the other athletes who managed to pull off great
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: feats of sporting expertise. Is that what NBC has been
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: able to do. Here to tell us more, Jerry Smith,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: media reporter, Bloomberg News. He can be followed on Twitter
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: at Jerry F. Smith. Great to have you with us, Jerry,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: thanks for being here, Thanks for having me. So do
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: you think that the our ratings, Now, I was gonna
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: say our ratings like NBC's tell us about the ratings
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: that NBC has been able to generate with their coverage
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: of the Olympics and the business of advertising, how that
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: all works together. Sure. So the ratings NBC's Olympics ratings
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: on the brad on its broadcast channel are down about
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: seventeen invent so far this year compared to four years ago,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and they're down even more about among eighteen to forty
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: nine year olds, which is that demographic that advertisers really
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: want to reach. So, you know, there's a lot of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: different theories for why that is. I mean, you could
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: argue that Netflix, for example, four years ago, had half
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: as many subscribers as it does today, so it's a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: much more popular. Uh. Snapchat was still in its infancy
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: back in two twelve. There's just a lot more entertainment
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: options for people than there was four years ago. And
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: another theory is that NBC for the first time put
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: all of the Olympics online more than six thousand hours,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and what that might have done is actually deluded the
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: ratings on the traditional television broadcast, which is where most
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of their advertising revenue still comes from. All right, well,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: if that we if that's the case, uh, would NBC
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: have to make good for the Uh, I don't know
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: what you would call it the guarantee east of ratings
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: that advertisers thought they were buying. Yes, yeah, NBC says
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: that they actually set aside enough extra advertising during the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Olympics to make the advertisers whole, because they guaranteed the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: advertisers they would reach a certain number of viewers. And UH,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: during the first week at least, they were falling short
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: of those guarantees. But looking forward, you know, the ratings
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: being down does raise a question about whether NBC can
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: continue to make the same sort of advertising revenue and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: profits that it did this year and that it has
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: in the past. With the ratings being down this year,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: and if you're looking at those, Olympics are going to
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: be in the Asian time zone, which is uh not
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: as advantageous as this year in Rio, which was only
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a one hour time difference from New York. So there
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: was the ability to show more of the events live
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: this year, and this has added importance because of the
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: price that NBC's parent company, Cast paid for the exclusive
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: US broadcast rights to the Olympics all the way through
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: twenty thirty two. They paid twelve billion dollars. That's a
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: lot of money. It is a lot of money and Comcast,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: which owens NBC is making a really big bet on
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: the Olympics, and a lot of other media companies have
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: made similar bets about the value of live sports because
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: right now audiences are becoming more and more fragmented, and
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the thinking has been the one sure thing that's still
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: going to get large numbers of of live viewers is
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: live sports. And NBC did still dominate the television landscape
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: for the past two weeks with their Olympics coverage, but
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: it is the ratings are down from four years ago,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and it does raise the question of what what's going
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: to happen in future Olympics. What do we know about
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the viewership of NFL, you know, uh, National Football League
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: as well as Major League Baseball would have been the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: trends there tell us about some of the demographics that
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: these the broadcasters are facing. Yeah, what's really interesting is
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: that in some sports the fans are actually getting older. Um.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Major League Baseball and the NFL have both seen the
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: average age um increase about four to seven years, so
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: their audience is actually getting older. And what happened with
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the Olympics is the ratings for that younger demographic, the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: eighteen to forty nine year olds, actually they watched less
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: of the Olympics than the overall population. So, you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: it does raise the question of there's just more entertainment
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: options for those younger audiences. NBC did something really interesting
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: this year where they had a Snapchat channel and they
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: asked BuzzFeed to run their Snapchat channel, and the thinking
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: is that they could entice more young viewers who are
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: on Snapchat to you know, check out the Olympics. On television,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and that's really I think going to be a bigger,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: a bigger part of their strategy going forward, where a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: lot of that that next generation of television viewers doesn't
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: immediately go on television to to watch the Olympics. Is
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: there some is there some way to kind of judge
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: which events did really well on the during the Olympics,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: like the US gymnastics. Yeah, I think the big events
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: where generally the events that have the big American stars
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: like Simone Biles for example. Right, the gymnastics did did well. Uh,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: the swimming did well, but it didn't overall, the Olympics
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: were down this year and we will have to see
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: how NBC approaches that going forward for future Olympics. I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: want to thank you very much for spending time with me.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Jerry Smith is our media reporter for Bloomberg News. You
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: can follow him on Twitter at Jerry F. Smith. Talking
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: about Comcast and NBC shares a Comcast down a little
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: bit more than a dollar share right now. This is
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg