Record ratings for NBC Universal’s coverage of the Olympic Games should silence speculation about General Electric’s commitment to the US broadcaster, its chief executive said Sunday.
The 209m viewers for an unprecedented 3,600 hours of coverage on seven NBCU channels in the first 15 days of the Beijing Games put it on track to surpass the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as the most watched event in US television history, Jeff Zucker told the Financial Times.
NBCU had seen a healthy return on its $894m investment in exclusive rights to the Games, said Mr Zucker, although he added that estimates that it could make as much as $100m profit were too high.
“Obviously we’ll make a profit here,” he said, noting that the company had sold an additional $25m of Olympic advertising inventory after media buyers realised the Games were attracting larger audiences than expected.
GE’s executives were reported late last year to be planning to review the conglomerate’s ownership of NBCU after the Olympics, amid fears that negative early publicity about the host nation could deter viewers.
Some investors have questioned the broadcaster’s fit with GE’s financial and industrial divisions. But Jeff Immelt, GE’s chief executive, named the broadcaster last month as one of four core assets that would give it the best chance of accelerating profit growth and reviving its shares.
“I don’t know how Jeff Immelt can be any clearer on this,” said Mr Zucker. “[Sale talk] is just silly speculation and has no basis in truth. Hopefully this will lay that silly speculation to rest.”
Mr Zucker highlighted a “halo effect” of NBCU’s Olympic success on the rest of the group’s content.
“I think there’s a better feeling about NBC than we have seen for years. We have advertisers who were delivered far more ratings points than they imagined or than we promised, and morale in the company is very high.”
Audiences for the nightly news programme on the core NBC network were up 31 per cent during the Games when compared to Athens four years ago.
Such figures demonstrated the continuing power of network television in an era of fragmenting audiences, Mr Zucker said. “What this proves is that the pipes still work. If you put on programming that’s compelling enough for the audience they’ll show up.”
