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Olympics: Record Audience, $1.2B NBC Revenue -- But Usual Viewer Complaints

  • Gigaom, Monday, July 30, 2012 2:06 PM

Good news for Comcast and NBC from London: The network reports record audiences for its coverage of the Olympics opening ceremonies Friday night and Saturday's coverage of the first day of competitions, according to Reuters' Jill Serjeant.

And NBC's revenue for the Olympics games is approaching $1.2 billion, which means it's coming closer to breaking even, reports Bloomberg's Andy Fixmer. “It’s better than we thought," says Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts -- considering that the company paid roughly $1.8 billion for the rights.

But NBC is still the usual suspect for Olympics coverage compaints, writes Stacey Higginbotham. "Once again, NBC is irritating the heck out of millions of Americans by messing around with the Olympics. Once again, the decision to show the opening ceremony in prime time via a time delay has resulted in people accusing NBC of “not getting it,” and of thinking “it’s 1992.” Once again, the decision to edit the games has some sports fans irked about cuts NBC made in the opening ceremony," she writes.

"And once again, U.S. consumers don’t get it. Sure, people are frustrated because they can’t easily stream the Olympics online without a cable subscription, and there will always be sports fans who don’t want the edited version of The Games... But frankly, for now, NBC doesn’t really care what those people want."

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