The Winter Olympics TV Ratings Sucked...Real Bad

The 2022 Winter Games TV ratings are in and they're so bad that the two weeks of broadcasts will go down as the least-watched Games -- ever -- for NBCUniversal, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

THR reports primetime viewership averaged 11.4 million viewers across the NBCUniversal properties, which is down 42% from the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. And if that's not bad enough, the Winter Games primetime numbers were down 26% from the 2021 Summer Olympics.

With very few bright moments to drive the Winter Games -- Savannah Guthrie opened the Games by kissing China's ass during the opening ceremony -- NBC was left just trying to get through the Games and move on from the COVID/China era as fast as possible.

NBC is left bragging about its streaming numbers (Peacock is $9.99/month) being the largest or second-largest for any Olympics on record. Across all its streaming platforms, average primetime viewership was up 8% compared to the summer.

“This was probably the most difficult Olympics of all time,” NBC's Pete Bevacqua told The Wall Street Journal while noting that advertisers were given additional commercial time to make up for the ratings disaster. “They were made whole throughout the entire Olympics," he said.

Bevacqua added that the network sent just 600 people to work in China while keeping 1,600 in Connecticut at NBCU headquarters due to China's COVID rules.