The Winter Olympic Virus AND Super Bowl Last Man Standing: An American Institution About To Die As The Legacy of Both?

Was thinking about this doing errands yesterday, and it kinda came to me regarding threads crossing both discussions of the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, both recently completed.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I do think this merits it's own post.

I want to present some numbers -- most of which I've already put on this blog, but it basically gives two different avenues to a same, and very disturbing, end.

Let's start with the Super Bowl.

There are two numbers I want you to take a look at, and to explain the difference here:  A show's rating is the number of television sets, as a raw percentage, turned on to that show.  A show's share, on the other hand, is the number of television sets which are actually on, as a net percentage, turned on to that show.

Nielsen ratings showed that the rating for Super Bowl LVI was 36.9 -- meaning 36.9% of all television sets in the country watched the game.  This is down 10 points in 10 years.  It was the lowest rating for any Super Bowl in the merger era -- and only the Second "AFL-NFL World Championship Game" (later graduated to Super Bowl II) and Super Bowl III have been lower.

But the even more disturbing number is when you look at the game's share on top of the rating.  Tied with Super Bowl 50, the 72 share the game received is actually the HIGHEST the game has received since Super Bowl XVI FORTY YEARS AGO.  And that meant that 72% of all television sets turned on in the country watched the Super Bowl.

Now, to Sports Media Watch and discussion of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics ratings fiasco.

NBC announced, on the first Thursday, a day in which their ratings (and this was a GOOD NIGHT!) were down a third from the Korean Olympics four years ago, that they had effectively well over half of all viewers on national network broadcast television, claiming they had 2/3 more viewers .than the rest of the networks combined.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the second week were all less than half of the Pyeongchang total, none exceeding nine million -- Wednesday breaking the record with less than SEVEN million.

And when Valieva took the ice on Thursday, only just over 8.5 million watched, that being down over 40% from Pyeongchang.

NBC is on the hook for Paris, Milan-Cortina, Los Angeles, wherever the 2030 Winter Olympics are going to be held (TBD), and Brisbane.

For SEVEN AND THREE-QUARTERS BILLION DOLLARS.  And most of that money has not been spent yet!  They're only through Rio, Pyeongchang, Tokyo, and Beijing.

And, for those who need a reminder:  This may well be one of the reasons that NBC dropped it's main national sports network, NBC Sports Network, at the end of 2021.  NBC has also ceased operation of a separate, more Olympic-sports offseason, themed network.

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So now let's do a degree of further number-digging on the Super Bowl, and then we can come to our thesis:

A scant ten years ago, for Super Bowl XLVI, the game drew a 47 rating and a 71 share.  If you do the math, that indicates about two-thirds of American television sets were turned on to SOMETHING during the Super Bowl.

Now:  With that 37 rating and a 72 share, it's about half.

And, even with the Winter Olympics ratings cratering, they still are well over 60% of all the of the network TV watchers.

To me, that indicates two ominous legacies:

First, the way sports has been delivered to you in the past and present is about to end.

And all you have to do at that point is look at three things:

1. The dissolution of NBCSN and the melding of it's Olympic coverage into a literal 24/7 network on NBCUniversal's major cable network, USA.  This means the end of at least the THIRD and probably final attempt at a subsidiary NBCU sports network.  (Versus, Outdoor Life Network)
2. A 16% drop, in ten years, of how many people are even watching television for the Super Bowl, plus, even with drops of about half the viewers of broadcast television for the Olympics, both parts, it's about the only game in town for broadcast television when it does air...
3. And the money involved.

And then you look at the increasing move in television contracts to Over The Top streaming outlets like Peacock (an increased presence in the 2022 Games, and a large home of much of NBCU's Premier League contract) and Amazon Prime Video (which will be the home of the NFL Thursday contract), as well as Free Ad-Supported Television streaming outlets like Pluto, IMDb TV, Roku, and Netflix for binging various series under the various ownerships, and there's a second situation coming over the horizon...

Is the decades-long existence of the national broadcast television network about to end completely?  

I can't see how NBCUniversal is going to be able to continue to pump out a good $4,000,000,000 or more for the remainder of the Olympic contract if American viewers have ceased to care, no matter the nation's position on the medal table?

I think the continued existence of NBC, as a broadcast television network at all, could well be in danger.  And then you look at the fact that the most-watched television program of the last almost 20 years has either been American Idol when it meant something to America on FOX, or the NFL Sunday night game on NBC, that does not portend well to the current model of American national broadcast television, except maybe for public-service machinations.

And cable is not immune.  ESPN has been bleeding money for years -- I can't see them surviving much longer.

As I say on a number of subjects, stay tuned -- that is, if there's going to be anything to stay tuned to.