How much money did NBC make airing the Olympics?

Question

How much money did NBC make airing the Olympics?

Answer 1

Way more than they deserved, considering the vast majority of what they showed was taped, and they were even asinine enough to leave the "live" icon on the tapes to try to fool people.

There was no live track, and very little gymnastics or swimming. All three of Usain Bolt's record runs were shown over 12 hours after the fact.

In this day and age of internet broadcasting, no TV company should be allowed to bid on "exclusive rights." No TV company can possibly show more than about 1 % of the games. When 90% of what they do show is tape, they should be banned from bidding entirely.

If you're old enough to remember when ABC did the Olympics, you remember how they had the decency to show important things live. Even nbc showed live track from Seoul. But not from Beijing, even though it's not so far from Seoul.

Bidding should be done by sport, and no network should be allowed more than 2 marquee events (track, gymnastics, swimming, boxing) and they should be required to show at least 75 % of finals live or pay a financial penalty to the government.

Streaming of the sports that don't get shown on television should be given to Google (You Tube) or another company that will show them for free. There was no reason for NBC to own all those streams. They didn't run the cameras that shot them, and they used the streaming as a way to attempt to force millions of people to switch from Adobe Flash player to Microsoft Silverlight, by making it exclusive in Silverlight format.

  

Answer 2

Good question. However, only the hierarchy at 30 rock know that. Advertisers prepay for commercials, so unless it's in the contract, after-the-fact, NBC could care less how many people actually watched. I'm sure it was a bundle though. And if karma existed, and I kinda hope it does, NBC should give some dimes to Phelps because without him, would the non sport fan have watched??????

Answer 3

I'm not sure, they did however pay more then $600 million for the rights to broadcast the games, though..

Answer 4

NBC made about 350 million dollars, but they could have made alot more if they aired the games LIVE!!!!

Answer 5

nbc paid around $950M for the rights to the olympic games. it earned around $350M.

Answer 6

i hate nbc,,, they took the westcoast for fools