March 1, 2006

NBC May Have to Issue Commercial "Rainchecks" Because of the Olympics

You know the Winter Olympic's ratings were pretty bad, when you hear news like this:

NBC Universal, the No. 3 U.S. network, may be forced to give advertisers free or discounted air time to make up for low viewership after its Olympic coverage twice failed to gain top ratings this week.
NBC sold about $900 million of ads for the games in Turin, Italy, aiming to dominate ratings as it has the previous seven Winter Games. The General Electric Co. unit promised advertisers it would make up for low ratings with television time at other events, and media buyers such as Andy Pappalardo said NBC's performance so far puts it at risk of triggering the agreements.

I think maybe we should start a class action suit against NBC and Nike for shoving Bode Miller down our throats during the Olympics. Personally, I'm a big Winter Olympics fan, but I found myself skipping a lot of the coverage because of all of NBC's hype and focus and the wrong athletes. The funny thing most people don't realize is that the US had one of it's best Winter Olympics with 25 medals. Oh well, bet somebody gets fired at NBC this week.

At Bloomberg.com

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