NBC Scores with the Olympics

It seems as if Michael Phelps isn't the only one scoring big with the Olympics.
NBC is reported to have spent around $900 million for the US broadcast rights of the 2008 Olympics and another $300 mill in production costs.The Games are expected to generate at least $1.7 billion in revenue from advertising time and sales of GE industrial products that have been incorporated into Olympic venues.


NBC is presenting its 11th Olympics which includes a record 3,600 hours of coverage on the Beijing Games, plus additional material on the Web. NBC also boasts about it's Beijing Olympics website, offering streaming coverage even of minor sports such as archery and fencing and working for months on technical improvements.

Putting it all in perspective, last February 's Super Bowl smashed records with 97.5 million total viewers. Now, NBC estimates that 157 million viewers watched at least some of the coverage spread across its various TV, online or wireless platforms during the first four days in Beijing. An average of 30.4 million viewers watched nightly in prime time, according to Nielsen.



The ratings according to Neilsen, tell the story.

Rank	Season average	Show name	Network	Viewers in millions
1.	X	Olympics Opening Ceremony	NBC	34.9
2.	X	Olympics	NBC	32.3
3.	X	Olympics	NBC	24.1
4.	13	America's Got Talent	NBC	12.6
5.	17	Two and a Half Men	CBS	10.0
6.	20	So You Think You Can Dance (Thurs.)	Fox	9.7
7.	54	Criminal Minds	CBS	9.1
8.	13	So You Think You Can Dance (Wed.)	CBS	9.0
9	47	NCIS	CBS	8.7
10	17	CSI: Miami	CBS	7.9
11	47	New Adventures of Old Christine	CBS	7.6
*.	X	America's Got Talent (Thurs.)	NBC	7.6
13	29	Wiipeout	ABC	7.3
14.	47	CSI: NY	CBS	7.0
15.	20	Big Brother	CBS	6.4
*	82	How I Met Your Mother	CBS	6.4
17.	93	60 Minutes	CBS	6.3
*	82	The Big Bang Theory	CBS	6.3
*	40	Flashpoint	CBS	6.3
20.	82	Nashville Star	NBC	6.2

...

Broadcast: Tops among 18-49-year-olds
Rank	Season average	Show name	Network	Viewers in millions
1.	14	Olympics	NBC	14.6
2.	40	Olympics Opening Ceremony	NBC	13.5
3.	48	Olympics	NBC	10.5
4.	17	American's Got Talent (Tues.)	NBC	4.6
5.	54	So You Think You Can Dance (Thurs.)	Fox	4.3
6.	X	So You Think You Can Dance (Wed.)	Fox	4.0
7.	48	Two and a Half Men	CBS	3.9
8.	30	Wipeout	ABC	3.7
9.	X	Big Brother (Tues.)	CBS	3.3
10.	n/a	Old Christine	CBS	3.1
11.	123	American's Got Talent (Thes.)	NBC	3.0
12.	123	How I Met Your Mother	CBS	2.9
13.	n/a	The Big Bang Theory	CBS	28
14.	n/a	CSI: Miami	CBS	2.7
*	n/a	Feugo en la Sangre (Mon.)	Univision	2.7
*	n/a	Al Diablos/Guapos (Tues.)	Univision	2.7
*	n/a	Feugo en la Sangre (Tues.)	Univision	2.7
*	n/a	American Gladiators	NBC	2.7
19.	84	Criminal Minds	CBS	2.6
*	84	House	Fox	2.6

Beijing tickets sold out

All tickets to Olympic events in Beijing have been sold, putting the 2008 Games on course to be the first to sell out. In all, 6.8 million Olympic tickets were available for domestic and foreign sales

In the U.S. you can watch it on TV from the comfort of your own home.
There will also be streaming to their site. To get the latest info, check out NBC.

Past Olympic Summer Games:

Athens 1896

Paris 1900

St Louis 1904

London 1908

Stockholm 1912

Antwerp 1920

Paris 1924

Amsterdam 1928

Los Angeles 1932

Berlin 1936

London 1948

Helsinki 1952

Melbourne / Stockholm 1956

Rome 1960

Tokyo 1964

Mexico 1968

Munich 1972

Montreal 1976

Moscow 1980

Los Angeles 1984

Seoul 1988

Barcelona 1992

Atlanta 1996

Sydney 2000

Athens 2004

Olympic Winter Games:

Chamonix 1924

St. Moritz 1928

Lake Placid 1932

Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936

St. Moritz 1948

Oslo 1952

Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956

Squaw Valley 1960

Innsbruck 1964

Grenoble 1968

Sapporo 1972

Innsbruck 1976

Lake Placid 1980

Sarajevo 1984

Calgary 1988

Albertville 1992

Lillehammer 1994

Nagano 1998

Salt Lake City 2002

Turin 2006

There won't be uncensored internet access at Olympic media venues.

The International Olympic Committee has said that there won't be uncensored internet access at Olympic media venues.

In a statement Kevin Gosper, International Olympic Committee (IOC) press commission chair, said:

“I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on website access during Games time (…). I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related.”

In reaction to the IOC statement, Mark Allison, East Asia researcher for Amnesty International said:

"The International Olympic Committee and the Organizing Committee of the Beijing Olympic Games should fulfil their commitment to ‘full media freedom" and provide immediate uncensored internet access at Olympic media venues. Censorship of the internet at the Games is compromising fundamental human rights and betraying the Olympic values."
"This blatant media censorship adds one more broken promise that undermines the claim that the Games would help improve human rights in China."

Foreign journalists working from the Olympics press centre in Beijing are unable to access the Amnesty International website. A number of other websites are also reported to have been blocked.



Amnesty International published the report "Olympic Countdown: Broken Promises" which evaluates the performance of the Chinese authorities in four areas related to the core values of the Olympics: persecution of human rights activists, detention without trial, censorship and the death penalty. They all relate to the 'core values' of 'human dignity' and 'respect for universal fundamental ethical principles' in the Olympic Charter. The new report showed there has been little progress towards fulfilling the Chinese authorities' promise to improve human rights, but rather continued deterioration in key areas.

In response to these and other related issues, a resolution calling on the Chinese government to end human rights abuses immediately passed the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday.The resolution, overwhelmingly approved on a 419-1 vote, comes just ahead of the start of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing .



Amnesty International spokesman Sam Zarifi says human rights activists, including those whose work is directly linked to the Olympics, are being locked up. Zarifi says the authorities are being overly sensitive to any potential criticism.

"The Chinese government has become so obsessed with projecting an image of stability and harmony that they won't allow any voice of disagreement, however reasonable or peaceful, so we see human rights activists being targeted," Zarifi said. "Even the promise that foreign media would be allowed to report completely freely as has been the case in previous Olympics, that has not been met."

Zarifi says The Foreign Correspondents Club of China, FCCC, has documented approximately 260 incidents of reporting disruptions this year, up from 180 in 2007.



The blocked sites will make it difficult for journalists to retrieve information, particularly on political and human rights stories the government dislikes. The censoring of sites such as Amnesty International or any search for a site with Tibet in the address can not be opened at the Main Press Center at the Olympic site, which will house about 5,000 print journalists when the games open Aug. 8.

"This type of censorship would have been unthinkable in Athens, but China seems to have more formalities," said Mihai Mironica, a journalist with ProTV in Romania. "If journalists cannot fully access the Internet here, it will definitely be a problem."

IOC officials have said the Internet would be operational by "games time," which began Sunday when the Olympic Village opened.