NBC’s decision to air its marquee Olympic events live in the afternoon continues to pay off, allowing the network to use daytime viewing to bolster its primetime audience.
Tuesday’s “primetime” coverage of the Paris Summer Olympics averaged a combined 27.4 million viewers across a live afternoon window and primetime replay, the full suite of NBC networks, and the measurement companies Nielsen and Adobe Analytics — up 47% from the equivalent day of the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics three years ago (18.6M).
Figures include most of the United States-Brazil men’s basketball quarterfinal, which aired primarily during the 2-5 PM ET window NBC is including in its primetime audience. The Americans’ blowout win averaged 3.7 million viewers across USA Network and Peacock.
NBC’s rationale for including afternoon viewing in its primetime audience is that it is carrying its typical primetime fare live during the day. Men’s basketball would not typically count as such — it has been rare for NBC to carry any basketball during its primetime window — but because NBC includes all of its Olympic networks during that 2-5 PM window, basketball is now included where it would not have been in past years.
Earlier in the day, the United States-Germany women’s soccer semifinal averaged 3.1 million on the same two networks. That match ended before the “primetime” window began.
Overall, NBC’s “primetime” window is averaging a combined 32.2 million viewers through Tuesday, up 77% from Tokyo (18.2M). This is the first Olympics for which NBC is including a live afternoon window in its primetime average, making comparisons to earlier Games apples-to-oranges — if even that.
This year’s average is nominally on par with London in 2012, when NBC averaged 32.8 million through 12 nights, but that average is for a single window on a single network measured by a single company — albeit during an era of far greater television viewing than today.
On a Nielsen-only, primetime-only basis, NBC’s viewership this year is far below London. Tuesday’s Nielsen-only primetime figure was an Olympic-low 13.9 million across NBC and USA, and the high water mark on that basis is 20.0 million for the opening Sunday.
By present-day standards, those figures are more than respectable. NBC said Wednesday that its primetime Olympics coverage (including USA) has produced 12 of the 19 largest primetime Nielsen audiences this year, excluding the NFL.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting how differently NBC’s Olympic viewership would be perceived if not for the addition of the live daytime audience.
