Ratings Review: 2014 Winter Olympics

It was a fun, but exhausting 18 days of coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics, from Sochi, Russia. NBC presented one most comprehensive games to date, with six networks and massive online streaming access. Given the time zone differences, the fact that NBC was able to win every night during the games, is pretty spectacular.

 The NBC primetime average for 2014 Winter Olympics was20.53 million viewers and a 5.2 rating in Adults 18-49, over 18 days. That is down more than 3.2 million viewers and 19% in the demo ratings, from the 2010 Vancouver games. Now, the 2010 games had live, primetime events for NBC, where as 2014 was all taped delayed. In fact, by the time the west coast had finished consuming their broadcast of the games, SOCHI, 12 hours a head, was already putting on the "Next Day" events.

NBC Late Night averaged 5.6 million viewers, the best numbers since the Salt Lake City games, in 2002. Plus, the final week of coverage featured the launch of Jimmy Fallon's reign on THE TONIGHT SHOW as it averaged 8.5 million viewers.

NBCSN, with 16 days of coverage, averaged 1.6 million viewers for it's weekday block from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. The live coverage of the USA vs Russia hockey game drew a record 4.1 million viewers.

The digital platforms for NBCSN served up 61.8 million unique users during the games. 10.8 million hours of video were consumed .

The next Olympics is set for the summer of 2016, in Brazil. They are two hours ahead of Easter Time, here in the states. That should give NBC some live events, in prime time,

The next Winter Olympics is set for Pyeongchang, South Korea. They are 14 hours ahead of NYC, meaning that when primtime hits the USA, it will be 10 a.m., the next day, in S. Korea. Lots of opportunities for live coverage for NBC, if they can strike a similar schedule as they did for Syndey in the summer of 2000.

Below is the day-by-day ratings chart for the games. The right two columns are the 2010 games, with the middle percentages being the differences between the two telecasts, for each day of their respective games.

	2014 Sochi GAMES			2010 Vancouver Games
	Viewers	A18-49	diff	Viewers	A18-49
02/06/14	20.02	6.0
02/07/14	31.69	8.6	-3%	32.641	9.0
02/08/14	25.12	6.3	-4%	26.189	7.6
02/09/14	26.32	7.2	0%	26.372	7.0
02/10/14	22.40	6.5	-11%	25.224	7.1
02/11/14	23.78	6.6	17%	20.330	5.5
02/12/14	20.81	5.6	-29%	29.416	9.0
02/13/14	22.94	6.0	-7%	24.782	7.0
02/14/14	19.11	4.5	-18%	23.304	5.4
02/15/14	17.11	4.4	-36%	26.668	7.4
02/16/14	21.27	4.9	-9%	23.294	5.9
02/17/14	23.55	5.6	13%	20.926	5.4
02/18/14	18.93	5.0	-11%	21.279	5.5
02/19/14	20.19	5.0	2%	19.808	5.5
02/20/14	20.29	5.0	-11%	22.920	6.1
02/21/14	14.93	3.6	-39%	24.522	6.5
02/22/14	13.28	2.8	-36%	20.630	4.8
02/23/14	12.72	2.6	-29%	17.994	4.8
02/23/14	15.12	3.2	-29%	21.403	5.5

* - in millions