What the Olympics in Asia mean for TV viewers?
- by Khaya South Africa
- May 24, 2017
- 2 min read
The next three Olympic Games - PyeongChang 2018, Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 - will all happen, more or less, across the same time zone.
This gives the Olympic viewing experience a new meaning. Asian and Australian fans will be able to enjoy the events during day time as they are happening. European viewers have to get up early as the Asian countries are eight hours ahead.
Winners of this development are American and South American viewers who enjoy nightshifts in front of their TVs. They will be able to watch the events happening, starting in their evenings and lasting the whole night.
"Nothing brings America together for two weeks like the Olympics - and that communal experience will now be shared across the country at the same time, both on television and streaming online," said NBC Olympics Production and Programming President, Jim Bell.
"That means social media won't be ahead of the action in any time zone, and as a result, none of our viewers will have to wait for anything. This is exciting news for the audience, the advertisers, and our affiliates alike."
Unlike the broadcasting difficulties posed by Sochi 2014 and London 2012, particularly for American and South American TV channels, these rights holders can look forward to relatively straightforward planning.
The Games' presence in Asia will allow for more prime time viewing - and greater advertising revenue.
American broadcasters NBC recently announced that they will broadcast the Pyeongchang Winter Games, live, across all time zones. On most nights, as well as morning and afternoon coverage, prime time broadcasting will start at 8pm eastern time.
Like their American counterparts, Australasia can also expect more prime time viewing, but European broadcasters will have more challenges.
Their live coverage of proceedings in Asia will happen, mostly, in the morning due to the eight-hour time difference. This will require a lot of highlights programming during prime time.
A series of broadcast benchmarks were broken at Rio 2016, when over 350,000 hours of TV and digital coverage of the Games were registered. This was a 150,000 increase on London 2012.
The number of hours of video coverage watched doubled from 500 million in London to one billion in Rio this year. There over seven billion views of official video content - mostly of broadcasters' official Games coverage - via social media.
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