Why is NBC changing the Olympic Medal Count order?

Question

For all history the medal count order has always been in that the country with the most gold medals, after all the real winner is only the gold medalist.

Now here comes the real mystery, since the 2004 Olympics, NBC has changed this to displaying the order for the overall count instead of the gold order. Why?

Someone said that American media has always ranked total medals but this is wrong, I have newspapers from Barcelona and Atlanta and taped coverage of Atlanta, Sydney and Athens. In Barcelona and Atlanta they have gold medal order, I don't have anything on Sydney but I think they also ranked by gold but since 2004 they changed order to total medals.

Also, back in 1992 they even had the "Unified Team" which was the former Soviet Union being represented as one entity beat the U.S. and NBC presented the medal table by the gold ranking.

Answer 1

This is a ploy to keep interest up.  All about ratings.  Along with the games you mentioned were the 64 Tokyo games where US led with gold but not total medals.

Answer 2

Why? So that they can remain on top of the medal tally by having the most bronze medals... lol~

Seriously, NBC is shameless for pulling this act. Why not accept the honorable second and preserve the dignity?  

Answer 3

The entire medal count ranking is laughable ! How can one even compare continents (i.e. USA, Australia) or countries of billions (i.e. China) with small countries like Lithuania, Netherlandss or Romania ?

C'mon, some countries are smaller than Rhode Island !

The NBC Olympics are nothing but "propaganda"... We've gotta be the only country (need I say superpower ?) where almost nothing is beig shown "live" !

Answer 4

Before the Olympic started, NBC guessed (correctly) that China would win more golds than the US but fewer medals overall, so they changed the way the medal table is listed to make sure the US were on top.

If you want to view the real medal table, see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics...

Answer 5

I just watched CNN sports, they list the ranking by Gold Medal count.