Total Audience for First Olympic Night Down 14%

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NBC’s coverage of the first night of Olympic competition from PyeongChang, South Korea, generated Total Audience Delivery of 17.2 million, down 14% from the 20 million who watched the games four years ago in Sochi, Russia.

The Sochi Olympics had no simultaneous live streaming and no competing Olympic cable coverage. Both platforms are now included in Total Audience Delivery, which NBC is using as the metric to guarantee viewership to advertisers.

Streaming minutes of live Olympic coverage quadrupled the amount of streaming from Sochi, NBC said.

Complete Coverage: 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

The Total Audience Delivery for Thursday’s Olympics dominated viewership on the other broadcast networks and was the highest audience for a Thursday night show since the NBC’s NFL Kickoff Game in September.

Thursday night's presentation also marked the first time NBC aired its primetime Olympic coverage live across all time zones.

Viewership peaked at 19.3 million from 9 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. when Nathan Chen performed in the figure skating team event.

Jon Lafayette
Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.