What is Digg?128 Comments
- ElAmo, on 08/25/2008, -3/+67impressive. i'm still unsure whether to be pissed off at nbc though. they did show the basketball final live (about time), but then again everything else was here on digg long before nbc got around to showing it.
- Bawk, on 08/25/2008, -5/+53Could possibly have something to do with over 75% of their aired programming being women's gymnastics/beach volleyball...
I'd love to see an "ESPN 2"-ish Olympics channel next time around. It would have all the sports that hardly get air time like shooting/handball/fencing/badminton. - JRjJ106, on 08/25/2008, -1/+47Considering that TVs are more accessible now than they used to be, is anyone really surprised that the Olympics attracted more viewers than shows and events that aired 30-40 years ago?
- j4nj1m3n3z, on 08/25/2008, -1/+38NBC has Michael Phelps and the us women gymnastics team to thank for this.
- Casework, on 08/25/2008, -0/+30You realize the Olympics were aired on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Universal HD, as well as a few other premium channels, right?
- theotheragentm, on 08/25/2008, -2/+30They totally milked that for all it was worth, playing Michael Phelps' races way light into the night. Do you know how many hours of wasted time I spent watching synchronized diving, waiting for what I really wanted to see? Well, the jokes on your NBC! I actually like synchronized diving now.
- Spandia, on 08/25/2008, -4/+30Considering T.V. wasn't as readily available when the M*A*S*H* finale aired, and the M*A*S*H* finale didn't last 16 days is this really fair? 16 days of bad coverage of a world event compared to the one time end of a sitcom
- J3553, on 08/25/2008, -17/+39teenage camel toe in HD will do that.
- TheNeptune, on 08/25/2008, -0/+19Well Pete, a lot of thought went into posting such an all around comment. You know, you train your whole life for this chance, reading books, watching snuff films, and stalking... so to see it pay off here - well I'm just really at a loss of words. I just want to thank my family and all my fans back in the USA for supporting me through this, never could have done it without you.
Defending my title? Well, there's a lot of time between now and 2012 and a lot of talented commentators out there, so I'll just keep working hard and we'll see what happens. Thanks Pete. - kingmanic, on 08/25/2008, -2/+18Maybe the opening ceremonies set a tone?
Normally the opening ceremonies are a huge meh... more "bad" interpretive dance then anything else. The Opening of the Beijing Olympics were simply massive spectacle, lite on the interpretive dance.
I'm sure phelps helped a lot too, nothing helps sports ratings like seeing the home team dominate. - bitterscream, on 08/25/2008, -3/+17With the total medal count being down again, a 12 hour difference, and NBC screwing up important live events (ie 100m) its very surprising that they got more viewers. I would have expected less.
- petemcfraser, on 08/25/2008, -1/+15You win the gold medal for most disturbing comment.
Please don't attempt to defend your title. Ever. - username7410, on 08/25/2008, -1/+14Very annoying considering those of us on the west coast saw virtually nothing lvie except the gold medal basketball game. I would have rather watched at 7:30 live, thanat 10:30 "live" on a tape delay.
- MLisa, on 08/25/2008, -0/+8Agreed. * Plus * the population is so much larger. There are more than double the number of TVs in the USA compared to the moon landing. It used to be only one TV per household. Also, I thought the OJ freeway 'chase' was the highest view show ever.
Comments welcome. - BossKey, on 08/25/2008, -0/+8Actually, your perception may be the reverse of the reality. Back when M*A*S*H and the moon landing were on, TV was THE ONE mass live visual medium, most people did not have cable TV, so as a result, media was highly concentrated. If you could put something on one of the three major networks, you garnered a huge slice of market share.
Now, media is so fragmented and broadcast TV so besieged by cable and Internet, that if you can get high ratings like this you are actually doing pretty well. - kmattso, on 08/25/2008, -0/+7"Comments"
- inactive, on 08/25/2008, -2/+9How can you compare viewership spread across 16 days to the MASH season finale. Lame.
- matthewinDRO, on 08/25/2008, -1/+8Much better coverage than last time. During the games 4 years ago, there would be an annoying "personality" segment between each and every event. It was enough to make you puke.
- Monk22, on 08/25/2008, -0/+6i think you just won the internets neptune. i lol'd, hard.
- RMoore08, on 08/25/2008, -6/+11M*A*S*H is to this day one of my favorite shows ever. Hilarious.
- mzx639, on 08/25/2008, -0/+4Don't forget women's beach volleyball.
- foolfoolz, on 08/25/2008, -6/+10Well, let me try this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=population+united+s ... says the july 2007 estimate for population is: 301,139,947. Lets just round that up to 302,000,000.
1990 population: ~ 250,000,000
and this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_Population_G ...
so 2008 Beijing Olympics 211,000,000 / 302,000, 000 = 69.87%
1996 Atlanta Olympics 209,000,000 / 275,000,000 = 76%
1994 Lillehammer Olympics 204,000,000 / 265,000,000 = 76.98%
2004 Athens Olympics 203,000,000 / 290,000,000 = 70%
1988 Seol Olympics 194,000,00 / 250,000,000 = 77.6%
Somewhat cool. couldnt find any u.s. information about viewers watching the moon landing though. this website (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-people-p ... claims it was world popluation of 3,588,351,000 in 1969, and the only number ive seen was that 500 million worldwide saw it. so that was 14% of the world saw it.
neat. - SkippyDoorknob, on 08/25/2008, -1/+5This story is just US ratings.
I doubt NBC got a single viewer in China. - matthewinDRO, on 08/25/2008, -0/+4you could watch online
- fuzzmeister, on 08/25/2008, -1/+5This isn't an entirely fair comparison, because the Olympics are 2 weeks long, while events like the Super Bowl are just a few hours long.
- CoolHandLuke, on 08/25/2008, -0/+4The real reason why I watched was because it was in HD. :)
I did enjoy it for the most part, I just got tired of seeing the same sports every night.
Swimming
Diving
Volleyball
Gymnastics - stopbrorape, on 08/25/2008, -0/+4Those are shown on MSNBC.
- inactive, on 08/25/2008, -2/+5More people watching the olympics because most other TV programming sucks.
- Rippleeffect, on 08/25/2008, -0/+3I was able to get a lot of those sports, but then again, I had my dvr recording every chance I could. Directv had those on channels 750-756
- jparkinson, on 08/25/2008, -1/+4The only event I watched in these past olympics was the speed-walking .... because its ***** hilarious to watch and the BMX races because they were very reminiscent of mario kart.
- matu4251, on 08/25/2008, -0/+3Their website www.nbcolympics.com was pretty cool. You could follow most even live even if team usa was not part of it. Personally I used that site a lot.
- Light0, on 08/25/2008, -1/+4Even if he hadn't brought in 8 of our 30-something golds, there would be other American swimmers to claim medals that Phelps beat out and we still would have been on top in the medal count. I'd hardly call that "nothing"
- kingmanic, on 08/25/2008, -0/+3The British segment of the closing ceremonies certainly deflated any of my expectations for the London games. You had massive spectacles of human organization and engineering in the beijing opening ceremonies vs one really cheap looking CGI intro, 2 dozen bad dancers, bad choreography, a double Decker bus, and a good set with some girl and 1/4 of led zepplin.
- marvinmatthew, on 08/25/2008, -0/+3You raise an excellent point.
How can you compare 16 days to a 2 1/2 hour event? - vbschoten, on 08/25/2008, -0/+3imagine if the Super Bowl lasted 2 weeks........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
- spookyttws, on 08/25/2008, -1/+4Can you imagine if the amount of product placement/ad space was around for those earlier shows. The future of historic television is a sad one: Coca Cola Presents The Mars Landing brought to you by Ford with small contributions from NASA and Virgin Galactic.
- devophl, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2The Olympics bent over backwards, as they usually do to move events to US prime time if possible. This meant the swimming and gymnastics finals were in the morning which is an inconvenience for most athletes, Phelps excluded. The track and field finals couldn't be held in the morning (most in evening when temperatures were cooler).
I noticed the compressed time between events for swimming so that events could be shown between 9AM and 12noon Beijing time to be live here. It must have been a nightmare for some swimmers to have to swim 2 or 3 events in a 3 hour period. In regular Olympics, the prelims are in the morning and early afternoon and the finals are in the evening. So you would never have seen Phelps swim in a prelim and final within 70 minutes of each other.
I also noticed that the gymnastic event finals, which often don't get as high of ratings (because Americans rarely medal) were moved to evening in Beijing. So we knew the event finals 14 hours before they were shown on TV here.
They couldn't do that in Athens and won't do it in London. Morning in London is 3AM here. Late evening is before prime time here. So you won't see much of anything live in London. - devophl, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2And don't forget the first live coverage of events since Atlanta had a lot to do with it.
- acbeck58, on 08/25/2008, -1/+3Actually, all those other sports did get airtime. I have DirecTV and was able to see almost any sport on NBC's other sister channels like USA, MSNBC, OXYGEN and whatever else they have. So, unless you just have your local channels, you could have also been able to see a lot more sports and live events. I think regular NBC was just reserved for the most popular events and prime time stuff.
- Misinformant, on 08/25/2008, -1/+3You mean to tell me an event that spanned 18 days for roughly 16 hours a day on 4 different channels got more viewers than a 1-hour season finale of a decades-old sitcom?
Wow! - pathouston22, on 08/25/2008, -1/+3Lots of hype around this Olympics about it being in China, China itself, the stadium, the cheating, the pollution, politics, etc etc.
It'll be interesting to see if this is an anomoly based on those things or if it will continue in London. However, after seeing the lamest of lame transistions in the closing ceremonies (including Mr. Stereotype crooked teeth mayor or London), I don't have much hope in the British. Good luck topping the China show. - kytmizuno, on 08/26/2008, -0/+2Well, that's around the world. This is just US statistics.
- Garlik, on 08/25/2008, -5/+7Am I the only one who watched it for about thirty minutes or so and then again when Jimmy Page played Whole Lotta Love?
- brentinkc, on 08/25/2008, -0/+2"Everything else" is a pretty blanket statement. There was plenty of live gymnastics and volleyball (if you live east of the Rockies)
- Monk22, on 08/25/2008, -0/+2im so tired of that *****. do they actually think plastering 500 ads makes me want to buy something more? the more i see a commercial (read, the more sick of seeing it i get) the less likely i am to buy their crap. mostly out of spite for seeing their logo 100 times a minute.
- varunb007, on 08/25/2008, -0/+2just to take it a little further, the prevalence of tv's has increased over the last decade. although most people had one back in the 80s and 90s, now pretty much everyone has at least one.
- drmangrum, on 08/25/2008, -0/+2Beat me to it. The population of the US is far larger than it was in the 60's and 70's. Raw numbers mean nothing without the context.
- Monk22, on 08/25/2008, -0/+1i would guess they are comparing the closing ceremonies viewers.
- Darksoul, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1Shure keep watching if you enjoy them them butchering innocent monks and keep their people in the dark about their own country anybody watching this ***** is a fool. Digg me down all you want but its the ***** truth.
- LoJack, on 08/26/2008, -0/+1We sold lots of commercials and bashed China while at it.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 128 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 