Olympics Coverage Will Have More ‘Female Appeal’

Wed., June 5, 1996

Stephen Battaglio The Hollywood Reporter

NBC Sports says it will step up its primetime coverage of events that appeal to women during its coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics from Atlanta.

“The Olympics are driven by female-appeal sports,” NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol said at a Wednesday news conference detailing the network’s coverage. “This time we have them spread out through the length of the Games, and the coverage of those sports is expanded.”

The strategy is to keep female viewers, who will be missing favorite NBC primetime entertainment shows during the Games, hooked on the Olympics. Ebersol said male viewers will sit through any event to get the results of their favorite sports. However, the network’s research shows that female Olympic viewers want “performance” events with stories and backgrounds about the participants.

“The family audience of the Olympics gets its main satisfaction from the story, from the struggle and the striving that is uniquely the Olympics,” Ebersol said.

The storytelling, Ebersol said, is important, as many of the key sports of the Olympics - such as gymnastics, track and field, swimming and diving - are followed by a small audience on a regular basis. The network has produced 140 features to help viewers get to know athletes in the Games.

Ebersol said NBC will show nine nights of gymnastics competition, the most popular event with women in primetime. Female gymnastics will be on six nights, compared with four nights when NBC broadcast the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

The diving competition, also a favorite with the female audience, will no longer run concurrent with gymnastics, which enables NBC to air coverage of both events on two Sunday nights. Swimming competition has been expanded from six to seven days.

The winners in the gymnastics competition also will participate with a “champion’s gala” similar to the figure skating exhibition held during the Winter Olympics.

The strategy of putting female appeal events in primetime worked well during CBS’ coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics, which well exceeded the network’s ratings expectations.

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