Most TV Rivals Aren't Daunted By the 2022 Winter Olympics

Between the Winter Olympics and Sunday’s Super Bowl 56, NBCUniversal expects to have a stranglehold on audiences and ad spend during most of February. In this week’s magazine feature on Super Bowl and Olympics ad sales, Dan Lovinger, president, NBC advertising sales and partnerships, estimated that marketers will spend approximately $400 million in scatter buys across broadcast and cable this month. And, given that for the 18 nights of NBC’s prime-time coverage, “we will likely deliver the equivalent of the three other broadcast networks combined, of course people are going to come to NBC for scatter in the Olympics,” said Lovinger. And while the Winter Games jumped out to a healthy ratings lead—Sunday's coverage averaged 13.7 million viewers in NBCUniversal's Total Audience Delivery audience metric—most broadcast rivals aren’t simply waving the white flag during these two weeks of the TV season, as they have traditionally done during past Winter Olympics. And some of the biggest streaming services are also rolling out high-profile shows during the Winter Games. Fox stuck to repeats during the 2018 Winter Olympics, but is taking a more aggressive approach this year. While its Sunday animated shows are airing repeats, the network has scheduled new episodes for the rest of its lineup, including 9-1-1: Lone Star, The Resident and new midseason shows Next Level Chef and The Cleaning Lady. Just 6 Months After Tokyo, NBCU Tackles Another Olympics Marketing Challenge Despite delaying its biggest midseason show, Monarch, until fall, “we’re pretty bullish on our schedule, and so we’re going to be airing our original programming throughout” the Games, said Michael Thorn, president of entertainment, Fox Entertainment. “We feel like, we’ll [be] a pretty competitive choice to watch during the Olympics. We're going to push through with our schedule.” ABC, too, is airing original episodes of many shows—like The Bachelor, Promised Land, freshman comedy hit Abbott Elementary and Black-ish—as well as a Jeopardy! National College Championship, which will be on all week. CBS, meanwhile, is sticking to a similar approach that it deployed in 2018: a mix of scripted repeats and original episodes of reality competition shows: a three-week-long celebrity edition of Big Brother (running up to five nights a week), and The Amazing Race, which “does pretty well” opposite the Olympics, CBS Entertainment president Kelly Kahl previously told Adweek. “It would always surprise us.” Streamers bring out the big guns While the linear networks are being more cautious, the streamers—many of whom either didn't exist or were still finding their sea legs during the last Winter Games—aren’t shy about putting some of the most-anticipated shows against the Olympics. Last Thursday, Amazon Prime Video debuted Jack Reacher, a series based on the Lee Child novels. When the streamer renewed the series on Monday, it said Jack Reacher was already one of Prime Video’s five most-watched series ever, both in the U.S. and globally. On Friday, Netflix will premiere Inventing Anna, the first series Shonda Rhimes (Adweek’s Media Visionary) has created since Scandal. The limited series is based on the 2018 New York magazine story about real-life con artist Anna Sorokin (played by Ozark’s Julia Garner), who passed herself off as a German heiress among New York’s social elite. Plus, on Thursday Paramount+ is resuming Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery, one of its biggest shows, and even NBCUniversal’s own streamer, Peacock, will debut Bel-Air, its gritty The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reboot, on Super Bowl Sunday.

Programming & Performance

Most TV Rivals Aren't Waving the White Flag Against the 2022 Winter Olympics

Counterprogramming includes a Jeopardy college tournament and Shonda Rhimes’ first series since Scandal

Jason Lynch

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Jason Lynch