NBC, BBC Score with Olympic Broadcasts

LONDON: Through 16 days of coverage, NBC averaged 31.1 million viewers for the London Olympics in prime time, while the closing ceremony drew 26.3 million U.K. viewers for the BBC, more than 80 percent of the country’s audience share.

For NBC, the London Games were the most-watched non-U.S. Summer Olympics since the Montreal Olympics in 1976. The 16-day average prime-time viewership of 31.1 million is up 12 percent from the 2008 Beijing Games and up 25 percent from the 2004 Athens Olympics. The London Olympics weekday daytime show set a number of viewership records for NBC. Average viewership of 7.1 million for all ten telecasts makes it the most-watched weekday daytime show of any non-U.S. Summer Olympics in history. Every weekday daytime broadcast topped the viewership of the comparable day from the Beijing Games.

The BBC reports that coverage on BBC One peaked at 26 million on Sunday night, beating the previous U.K. audience record for an Olympic closing ceremony, which was the Barcelona closing in 1992 that had 11 million viewers. The BBC’s HD and 3D coverage added an additional 300,000 viewers to Sunday’s total. Overall, the London Games delivered the largest U.K. television event since current measuring systems began, according to the BBC. Reports show that 51.9 million viewers, 90 percent of the U.K.’s population, watched at least 15 minutes of coverage; 24.2 million, or 42 percent of the British population, also watched at least 15 minutes of coverage on the BBC Red Button.

Danny Cohen, the controller of BBC One, said: "It has been an absolute privilege to broadcast the London 2012 Olympics on BBC One. It’s been a phenomenal Games and Team GB’s amazing achievements have helped draw huge audiences to BBC One and put the channel right at the heart of the action. We’ve had fantastic feedback about the quality of the BBC’s coverage and all the teams involved deserve huge thanks and praise."

The Games also proved popular on social media. Twitter estimates that there were more than 50 million tweets about the Olympics.