The Winter Olympic Virus: Day 8

• And it can't be an Olympics without an American sporting federation getting under investigation for sexual misconduct by their coach -- this one is the snowboarding coach Peter Foley.  Foley has been the snowboarding head coach for as long as the program has existed.  Taking nude photos of the athletes for over a decade.  And a fellow athlete, who is in Beijing for the Games, of racial slurs and the like.  This is ANOTHER REASON the IOC needs the Russians out.  Howinfuck are we going to deal with the issues surrounding DAMN NEAR EVERY SPORT IN THE CATALOG with the United States Sexual Assault Committee if we can't deal with the obvious shit going on in another TBTF Olympic country?  
• Gee, I wonder if he works for Barstool Sports or KNBR, after the comments from one guy which got him fired four years ago about Chloe Kim?   
• And, dare I ask how many nudes of Chloe Kim you have (hoping to find out when you're arrested for them, you piece of crap)?
• At least one country (Japan) is going to demand that all athletes coming home from Beijing having their phones scanned for Chinese spyware.  As much as I would usually love to be skeptical about a story like that...   
• Both Sapporo, Japan and Salt Lake City,/Park City, Utah are holding discussions regarding their bids for the 2030 Winter Olympic Games.
• It is kind of ironic that Inside the Games broke the story on the drug situation with Valieva, while their main advertisement on the front page of the site is a "Russian Athlete of the Day" situation -- and one of the features is the figure skating team...
• Lindsey Jacobellis is now double for the USA, teaming up with 40 year old Nick Baumgartner to win the mixed Snowboard Cross gold.  USA, for the moment, now third in the table.
• Inside the Games reporters in Beijing are being threatened by Russians, enraged that the British website (which I have thankfully gotten a lot of information for these posts from, thank you guys!!) broke the story that Valieva, the purported "Little Miss Perfect" future of figure-skating, popped dirty at the Russian championships.  Reporters in Beijing were approached by angry Russians with cameras, almost ensuring they are about to be doxxed for breaking the story.
• The Russians are now claiming COVID delays are why this was not found out before the Games.  I'd not believe them, because Russia, but I have seen the effects of COVID and COVIDiots on people getting valid health care here in the States.  I still think it's another way for Russia to dance around and cheat.
• To try to pad from losses due to poor US ratings, NBC not only cut the ad rate for the Beijing Games by 40%, it no longer offered guarantees to advertisers as to what kind of numbers they could expect.  (This was largely to avoid the "make-goods" they had to give Tokyo 2021 advertisers due to those ratings being in the tank.)

Ratings woes (Sports Media Watch):

• Saturday:  10.15 million NBC, 13.6 million overall.  54% loss on the main network, 44% overall.
• Sunday:  11 million NBC, 13.7 million overall.  52% loss on NBC, 47% loss overall from Pyeongchang.
• Monday:  8.45 million NBC, 11.5 million overall -58% main network, -48% overall.
• Tuesday:  8.35 million NBC, 11 million overall.  -59% main network, -51% overall.
• Wednesday:  9.79 million NBC, 12 million overall.  -43% main network, -38% overall.
• Thursday:  11.09 million NBC, 13.2 million overall.  "Only" -32% on both measures.

But there are two ominous realities:

• This could not only signal the end of American broadcasting of the Olympics as you've known it...  They'll probably wait for Paris to confirm this, but when you're dropping a third of your audience in four years and having your bottom 15 viewership numbers between Tokyo and Beijing, something is badly wrong with the American coverage -- and NBC is stuck with it another decade...
• If NBC (and American national broadcast television at all!) survive!!  Probably an even more ominous reality is the fact that, even with the shit numbers on Thursday, it turns out only slightly more than 20 million people watched the four major and any minor networks -- the Olympic numbers, as bad as they were, were still 2/3 higher than the combined number of all other broadcast television networks.  Remember, they've already lost NBCSN, to the point where USA Network now literally runs Olympic coverage 24/7 throughout the Games, including rebroadcasts during Chinese overnight/USA midday.