The TV ratings for the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Rio 2016 took a huge dive from four years ago in London
Everyone knew that there were going to be problems at the 2016 Rio Olympics once the first reports began circulating about the conditions in the host nation. Not only might that create some problems for the athletes competing and fans attending, but some fans might also not even want to tune in. However, the Olympics didn’t do themselves any favors with the Olympics Opening Ceremony on Friday night and the TV ratings reflected that.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Rio drew an overnight16.5 rating among households. For those unfamiliar with household TV ratings, that translates to somewhere in the ballpark of 30 million people watching. While that’s an incredible number objectively, it doesn’t look great in comparison to years past.
From the same report, the 16.5 overnight rating is down 28 percent from what the 2012 London Olympics drew for the Opening Ceremony. What’s worse is that it goes back farther than that as the ratings for the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremony are the lowest since the 1996 games in Atlanta.
Obviously concerns about the population, Zika virus, and many other things may have affected how many people tuned in to the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremony, but that may not have been the biggest blunder.
What truly may have killed the TV ratings is the fact that NBC aired the ceremony on a one-hour delay to better suit the market in the United States—despite Rio being just one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time. In an age where everything gets put on social media, that was a bad move and it apparently cost the folks at NBC some major numbers.