NBC’s Olympic coverage has a gender gap problem over first 10 days

Over the first 10 days of the Winter Olympics, three scholars have found a noticeable gender gap while tracking TV coverage of men’s and women’s sports.

Historically, a gap in coverage between men’s and women’s events at the Winter Olympics is inevitable. Access to medals in every discipline has been an ongoing battle for female athletes. It took until 2014, for instance, for women to get a chance to compete in ski jumping.

As of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics, though, the only event that is exclusively male is now Nordic combined. With women now enjoying Olympic opportunities on the ski jumping hill, it is only a matter of time before they compete for medals in Nordic combined events as well.

However, while women have more medal opportunities than ever before in Winter Olympics history, the coverage still skews heavily toward men on network television.

Andrew C. Billings, James R. Angelini, and Paul J. MacArthur, who collaborated on the book Olympic Television: Broadcasting the Biggest Show on Earth, have been tracking cumulative data each day of NBC’s men’s, women’s, and mixed-team coverage of Pyeongchang. The three scholars from the University of Alabama, University of Delaware, and Utica College have provided daily tracking data of their findings.

After the first 10 days of coverage, the NBC prime-time broadcasts have overwhelmingly favored men’s sports over women’s sports. Billings, Angelini, and MacArthur broke down this evidence further.

The authors took pains to find evidence to explain the 60/40 split in men’s versus women’s coverage. They recognized the early impact of shifts in the Alpine skiing calendar that stacked men’s and women’s events side-by-side. Alpine skiing features some of the marquee opportunities for women’s coverage every Winter Olympics. Due to the high winds on the mountains, women’s events were also stacked up against other sports.

The authors dispelled the idea that a medal gap between men and women was the cause. After noting that the podium results can sometimes skew domestic coverage in various versions of national network coverage, they showed how the American medal count was split evenly between men and women. Thirteen of the American medals were won by men, 13 more by women, and two by mixed teams.

Over just under 24 hours of primetime network coverage, NBC devoted half the time to men’s events. They split the other 12 hours roughly two-to-one between women’s events and mixed events.

Unexamined factors

One element that hasn’t been studied as much is the decentralization of coverage by NBC. NBC spreads its coverage across its family of networks. As a result, popular women’s events such as curling and ice hockey get less coverage on the network primetime feed. Whether they get less coverage overall is not stated.

The shift by many to using the NBC Olympics app to watch live online feeds also has an undetermined impact. Whether on their computers or through mobile and streaming devices, this app viewership deemphasizes primetime network coverage.

It will be interesting to check back in to see what Billings, Angelini, and MacArthur find by the end of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Will this gender gap persist in the primetime coverage offered by NBC? And will they expound further on the coverage offered by NBC’s other networks? Once we can parse that data against the viewer ratings, and if it becomes possible to obtain data of app viewership, we will get a better picture of this gender gap.

Next: Best Olympian from each state

For more from the Winter Olympics, make sure to follow FanSided and stay tuned to our Olympics hub for all the latest news and results. Follow the Olympics medal count here.