In the United States, there is much discussion of the poor TV ratings that the Torino Olympics are receiving. Some of the debate centers around NBC’s frustrating and poor coverage of the games. However, is there something more?
In today’s TV universe, there is an abundance of choice. Americans have more choices than at any other time. This naturally results in a splintering of audiences. As the audience further fractures into smaller and smaller groups, will we lose the “simultanaity” that we have had in the past? Will we, as a culture, lose those common experiences that have served to bind us together into a semi-cohesive group nation?
There was a time, not long ago, when “water-cooler” conversation would center around the Olympics. Now, while people are aware of the Olympics, people don’t seem to be watching. This seems to happen to other events, too. Even the NFL Superbowl’s ratings, while higher than other TV programs, are lower than they have been in the past. As audiences shrink into smaller groups, will we come to a point where the audience can no longer sustain expensive productions, such as the Olympics? Even on a strictly pay-to-view proposition, it seems that the audience willing to pay would be too small to support the event.
If civilization is held together by football games and the last episode of Friends, then it really wasn’t worth saving anyway.
There’s always something to talk about. Even if we’ve got more recreational options, there’s current events and the everyday trials of human life. You know, things that matter.
Actually, I disagree with the premise entirely. The success of Lost, a show with an engrossing ongoing mystery that its fans love to speculate together about, means that more networks are attempting to build “community watching” television events.
With entertainment we’ll see several dynamics manifested by the ratings numbers.
Natural selection will weed out the networks and shows that have highly splintered and unsupportive base viewers. Renting the air time will be too expensive. If, however, the cost of renting airtime for a network drops so much as to become a commodity, the splintering of audiences could be permanent. Does anyone know what it costs to start a network or license a new channel on satellite or cable?
Migration of audiences, the advent of DVRs the expansion of networks and shows into global markets are all a part of this dynamic. Even the economics of advertising budgets comes into play. It’s hard to finger an underlying social movement.
The globalization and syndication of shows all over the globe being repackaged and delivered to the rest of the world (e.g. The Office) encourages a more globally common bond between mankind doesn’t it?
How about iTunes and DVRs further allowing us to splinter into our own groups? Do these technologies allow us to share stronger bonds with those that more closely share our experiences because we have instant access to whatever we truly want to see?
I think the OP’s “end of civilazation” comment is just hyperbole.
Frank Deford of NPR hit the nail on the head today (2/22) about the Olympics’ decline. Link
Among other things, he compared the Olympics to the Miss America Pageant as a tired game show that has run its course, gussied up with ersatz purity and patriotism . He also said that the Olympic flame is now just another corporate symbol like the Nike swoosh or Coca-Cola swirl.
I mean-it is not as if most WO events have much of a following in the USA-outside of Hockey, a few downhill skiing events, and figure skating, exactly how many Americans actually watch these events? I am totally clueless about winter biathlon-I don’t know anybody who watches it. and curling? This is a sport?? How do you justify handing out gold medals for sweeping the ice with funny little brooms? But i digress-I want to see who wins at couples ice dancing…or 4 man bobsld-do the Brazilians have a chance?
What we need is for the terrorists to field an olympic delegation. Back when hockey was us vs the commies, people were excited. Now not so much.
Course the deserts of Palestine and Iran may be a difficult place to work on those ice skating flips, but if the Jamaicans can put forward a bobsled team, then Osama can to. They just need heart and to be true to themselves, then they’ll show all those naysayers who say it can’t be done.
If there were more American medal winners, if the ones expected to medal in Torino hadn’t choked so often, there’d be a lot more interest among the American TV audience. The Games really are largely about providing a safe outlet for belligerent nationalism, but you need to have your nation’s name involved to care - unless you’re one of the handful here who actually follow most of these sports more than once every 4 years.
It also doesn’t help that almost everything interesting is on tape delay, heavily edited at that, so there’s no drama for most in seeing if your own country’s athletes are going to win. If you care, you already know by the time it’s on, and if you don’t care, you don’t watch anyway.
The United States has already won more medals at the Torino games than at any previous Winter Games except for 2002. But the ratings are worse than ever.
This is the main problem, IMHO. The horrible coverage American audiences get has been a festering problem for years, and has been turning off viewers bit by bit at every Olympics.
But will we ever get to a point where grand spectacles like the Olympics will no longer be viable? Will the audiences for such things be so fractured that advertisers cannot justify the huge ad rates that support these things?
This may cause topic drift in this thread, but what about a la carte cable TV channels? If viewers purchase only those few channels that they watch and not pay for others, won’t a lot be lost?
Maybe civilization doesn’t hang on the last episode of Friends, but it does hang on common experiences. TV shows may not matter in the grand scheme of things, but entertainment such as TV, movies, sports, etc. provide a framework that people of all cultures can communicate across.
Not in comparison to expectations, which is what counts in this game. The US athletes who got the most pre- and early-Games hype have fallen short, sometimes embarrassingly - Bode Miller, Lindsey Jacobellis, Johnny Weir, Michelle Kwan, Belbin&Agosto (she wasn’t even an American until last month anyway), the women’s hockey team, the men’s hockey team, pretty much every sport or athlete that has significant interest down here. Even Sasha Cohen winning the gold won’t make up for it all.
No doubt about it. NBC cut a long-term deal with the IOC back in the Eighties, and the lack of competition since has hurt the product quality badly. It’s just too easy for them to fill time with silly, weepy studio interviews and canned biographical sketches instead of actual event coverage.
Not as long as we have nationalism, too. Every Games, you hear a lot of wailing about the ballooning costs of the Games, but there’s never a shortage of applicant cities at bidding time.
Some of us watch because it’s a tradition that goes back decades. I’ve watched every Olympics since the Summer games of 1972. I remember many of the important events that happened in each of those games. I can’t imagine stopping now.
It’s also part of my life in a way that it probably isn’t for most people. I’m probably one of the very few people who was actually LIVING IN (not just visiting) two different cities when they held the Olympics. I was living in Montreal in 1976, and in Los Angeles in 1984. So I got to experience all the years of hoopla in both cases.
To me, asking a question like “why are you watching the Olympics?” would be like asking most Americans “why are you watching the Superbowl?”
The biggest problem for the Olympics is that it’s running against American Idol. Usually the other networks roll over and let themselves get steamrolled every two years. But Fox is fighting back and winning against what is pretty weak Olympic programming.
Another interesting theory might be the population shift in the United States. As the population shifts from the North/Midwest to the South/West, fewer people are growing up in cold climates. So, not as many people are trapped inside during lousy weather as a captive audience for the Winter Olympics. Also, children aren’t growing up around snow for several months of the year.
This is a huge part of the problem: In a fractured sports cable universe that seems to find time for tedious poker tournaments, late-night college basketball from an obscure mid-major conference, and the pinball machine that is Arena League football, why aren’t some of the more thrilling Olympic events seen in sports prime-time more often than once-every-four-years?
When was the last time ESPN showed any World Cup skiing event at all, let alone in a evening/weekend slot? There’s a niche here for, say, the Outdoor Life Network to fill…
It’s a precision game, seeing how well they’ll throw the stones and block or knock out the opponent’s. The appeal of watching it is not unlike the appeal of watching a well-played game of billiards.
The sole reason why I have been mostly avoiding TV coverage is the Olympics is simple: the unbearably bad job NBC has been doing. More specifically, too many faux-drama life stories of supposedly struggling althletes, too much pseudo patriotism, too little actual coverage of a variety of events (and not just those with Amerkins competing in them as favorites), and worst of all: too much air time spent on commercials compared to time spent broadcasting the actual Olympics.
More coverage of actual events and less coverage of crap would go a long way towards my regaining interest in watching these events.