Getting the REAL gold: London Olympics surpasses Beijing as the most-watched event in U.S. TV history. It looks like NBC’s gamble to show more programming than ever, and to risk spoilers with its own tweets and other social media, paid off pretty well. Interesting, interesting.
Read more here about the numbers: http://ow.ly/cWz7U
(Source: deadline.com)
Add this to the list of Very Good Timing: Just days after Sanya Richards-Ross snags the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 400-meter race, WE tv announces it has picked up a pilot of a reality show based on her life training for the Olympics and her relationship with NFL-playing husband Aaron Ross and the rest of her family.
Having known a couple of super-athlete couples such as this, the show could capture some very interesting dynamics for the small screen. Does this show grab your interest?
Read more here: http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/we-picks-up-reality-pilot-starring-london-olympic-champion-sanya-richards-ross/
It’s 100 degrees out & then this news came over: the Olympics closing ceremonies will include an ‘After Party’ with more than 20 music acts:
Among the performers tipped are The Who, Paul McCartney, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, George Michael, Paul Weller, the Spice Girls, Adele, Ray Davies, Liam Gallagher, Annie Lennox, Madness, the Pet Shop Boys, Take That, Muse, One Direction and members of Queen.
And goodness knows what else. I’m so in wrong town right now, much as I love LA.
Read more here: http://ow.ly/1lTHly
(Source: deadline.com)
TV RATINGS: Olympics Day 11 are down again from last week, but they’re still great and still exceed what NBC was able to achieve in Beijing four years ago.
Read more here: http://ow.ly/1lSQXB
(Source: deadline.com)
Here’s the first episode of “Deadline Wall Street with David Lieberman.”
Deadline’s Executive Editor David Lieberman chats with me by podcast about the exhibition business and IMAX; Aereo and Les Moonves; cable cord-cutters versus “cord-nevers” and making money from the Olympics. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Also, if you’re listening in iTunes, we’ve got the AAC version at: http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/deadline-wall-street-with-david-lieberman/
Not that there’s a single person at NBC complaining about THIS part of their coverage: the network set another 36-year high in ratings for their Day 6 Olympics broadcast.
The network has been battered online by complaints about its programming decisions, omissions, spoilers, tape-delayed torture and so much else, but either the American public at large are video masochists or they just love them some Olympics, at levels we’ve not seen since there were three networks and the Games were a few miles from Plattsburgh, New York, in Montreal.
Read more about last night’s ratings, and the not-so-great night for other networks’ programming here: http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/tv-ratings-london-olympics-day-6-hits-high-beijing-michael-phelps-gabby-douglas/
It didn’t quite score a gold, but the US Olympics team’s channel soared on Deadline’s YouTube rankings, jumping a Phelps-ian 266% during the first week of the games.
Perhaps even more interesting is the strong overall growth in the 100-plus channels Deadline is tracking. Viewership this week has hit nearly 81 million visits, highest in the 11 weeks we’ve been doing this stuff. Someone’s starting to pay attention. Advertisers may too.
(Source: deadline.com)
Former NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw checked in at today’s TCAs by satellite from London, where he’s resolutely not retired and keeping very busy, he told TV critics. And in fact, any misapprehension that he was retired was quickly laid to rest. Brokaw heads off to cover the fall elections as soon as the Olympics are done, and he’s got plenty more on his plate.
Read more about all that Brokaw is up to here: http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/tom-brokaw-on-non-retirement-world-war-ii-and-whats-next-tca/
The vituperation over NBC’s tape-delayed Olympics, and the occasional eliding of, oh, kinda important real stuff, has driven a certain subset of the American public (not to mention one very vexed LA-based correspondent for The Independent) slightly nuts, leading to a Twitter storm of #NBCFail tags.
So, it’s with some bemusement that I report the latest updated numbers by Deadline’s Dominic Patten: People are hating the Olympic coverage so much they sent ratings to a 36-year high.
NBC, which is now saying it’s expects to break even on the Olympics, has to be giggling a bit in its bunker, relatively safe from all the incoming snark while counting the billion dollars that it sold in advertising and is now delivering on so substantively. Who’d have thought this was coming?
Oh, and lots more about all this to read over on Deadline at: ow.ly/cHtuT
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Film still with stop motion animation
Directed by Don Chaffey (1917 - 1990), animated by Ray Harryhausen (1920 -...
Our last Wednesday Workshop focused, in part, on ways to get readers more involved in our stories. When news of last week’s...
Sharks and Fish
Via The Warholian.
