If only this was really the world.
This was the view from our living room as the Games of the 2024 Olympics wrapped in Paris. The Olympic ideal seems so far removed from the fractured state of planet Earth, politically, environmentally and on so many other levels. Hats off to France and their Olympic organizers for aiming high with such an artistic approach to the opening and closing ceremonies of these Games.
Did things get a little too Hollywood Sunday? Well, sure. The handoff to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games played like one long movie trailer, with No. 1 box office attraction Tom Cruise as the hero. Searchlights found Cruise on top of the Olympic stadium apparently stepping off his Scientology spaceship. He found a handy cable and slid down to the puzzle piece stage below. Landing like Tinkerbell, he shook hands with athletes, jogged over to Simone Biles and grabbed the Olympic flag.
The next step should have been on horseback, like those “Stronger than dirt” Ajax ads from decades past. Instead Maverick took to his motorcycle, speeding past the Eiffel tower and other Paris landmarks before ramping into a cargo plane. Cruise tucked the flag into his tiny backpack and skydived down to terra firma, USA, landing near the Hollywood sign. Remind me to book a cargo plane next trip to France.
Cue the drone-powered ultimate crane shot, with Cruise way up on the Hollywood sign, standing between the W and the two OO’s. Those letters were joined by three more O’s, all forming the five colourful Olympic rings. Wailing in the background were Flea and the rest of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a very LA touch.
Billie Eilish, in two different coloured socks, brought things down, mumbling through a song near a surf shop. Then back to the 50-year-olds, with Dr. Drea and Snoop Dogg tearing up the beach.
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A Bet Rivers ad on a split CBC screen was enough to send me switching over to NBC’s coverage. The whole sports gambling thing, so invasive on Hockey Night in Canada that they’ve become boring, felt like a rude blast of money-is-everything during Olympic coverage. Not that money isn’t everything to the IOC overlords, but these ads just seem less welcome mixed with the international brotherhood of torch and flag swapping.
NBC was a bit behind the CBC coverage in prime time. They were showing a pronoun proud artist named HER singing the U.S. national anthem. She reached for the high notes, as well as her electric guitar, and killed it. The U.S. broadcaster then cut to Cruise doing his Olympic Tarzan swing down to the stage stunt. While that was happening, the kids in the choir hit eardrum-piercing high notes as wine bottles shattered all over France.
One or two acts too many followed. There was a massive fireworks display. With the flag gone Hollywood and the torch extinguished (by a bottle of Evian water?), a diva sang Paul Anka’s “My Way.” It would have been nice if the CBC commentators had identified her instead of saying, “Well, that was something else.” The unseen reporter might as well have been on the phone to her mom.
Having said that, Jimmy Fallon didn’t exactly distinguish himself with his closing ceremonies commentary on NBC.
CBC did a nice job covering the actual athletic events during the 16 days of the games. The excitement of seeing Andre De Grasse blast through to a gold medal in the men’s 4x 100 relay was electric in both French and English coverage.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who watched those 40 seconds of gold over and over again on my phone. That is the reality now with Olympic coverage — you truly can see just about anything on demand, even beyond officially sanctioned platforms. All you had to do was say, “Tom Cruise stunt Paris 2024” into a Rogers remote stick and there on YouTube was the moment, even before the CBC and NBC broadcasts got back to him in prime time. You could, of course, also follow the Games on CBC Gem, CBC News Network, TSN, CBC’s dedicated Paris 2024 website (cbc.ca/paris2024) and the CBC Paris 2024 app for iOS and Android devices.
Or you could just watch Olympics super fan and former SNLer Leslie Jones on Instagram blast out her hilarious commentary.
Speaking of Instagram and other TikTok coverage, one might have thought the Games were mainly about one French athlete who was inched out of the finals in the pole vault. Was this not the most-watched moment of the Olympics? The guy was apparently so distraught he was going to pack it in but apparently he’s now going to stick it out for another year.
The record setting performance by Canadian athletes, earning nine gold and 27 medals, certainly helped keep Canadian viewers engaged on the public broadcaster. CBC’s media research team claims that 3.4 million Canadians cheered on the Canadian women’s soccer team towards the end of their quarterfinal game, making it the most-watched moment of the Paris Olympic coverage up to that point. (More data from the past few days of coverage to come.)
In traditional broadcast terms, CBC succeeded in becoming Canada’s most-watched English network through the first ten days of coverage, out-drawing the private networks among total 2+ viewers and those in the 25-54 demo. That the daytime and prime time broadcast averages weren’t higher — they fell mainly in the one million to 1.5 million range — is due to two factors: with shorter attention spans, fewers viewers watch cover-to-cover anything anymore. And with every Olympics, CBC and NBC’s broadcast audience is shrinking while their digital and streaming platforms are setting records. In a way, one platform is canibalizing the other.
The 18 million hours of Paris 2024 content consumed over the first 10 days on CBC’s digital and streaming platforms jumped 74 per cent over the amount consumed three years ago during Tokyo’s summer games and 106 per cent over the Beijing winter Games of 2022.
It helped, of course, that the time difference is less extreme from France than Tokyo and Beijing. Then there is the success of the Canadian athletes and the more light-hearted, artistic approach of the French — both significant factors.
Over the first 10 days of coverage, the most-watched Canadian athletic moments moments from Paris were:
- Day 8, Saturday, Aug. 3 at 3:45 pm ET when 3.4 million Canadians watched the end of that Canadian women’s soccer quarterfinal match against the victorious team from Germany.
- Day 6, Thursday, Aug. 1 at 2:35 p.m. ET, when 1.933 million CBC viewers watched Summer McIntosh’s second gold medal win in the 200m butterfly.
- Day 2, Sunday, July 28 at 5 p.m. ET when the women’s soccer team scored the winning goal against France.
- Day 9, Sunday, Aug. 4 1:38 p.m. ET when 1,911 million watched Summer McIntosh’s unsuccessful bid for a fourth gold medal in the 4x100m medly relay.
- Day 5, Wednesday., July 31 at 4:48 p.m. ET when the Canadian women’s soccer team defeated Columbia.
Other big draws for CBC over the first 10 days were McIntosh’s two other gold medal swims, Team Canada’s introduction during the cruise down the Seine in the opening ceremonies and Ellie Black’s performance in artistic gymnastics.
One of the best things CBC did was the brisk and stirring cut reel at the end of their Olympic coverage. You can click on the photo and watch it at the top of this page.
In the United States at Comcast-owned NBC and their streaming service Peacock, the Games were an incredible success. Over the first 13 days of the Games, the U.S. rights holder says their coverage averaged 32.2 million viewers across their TV and streaming platforms according to data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. (That number is a combined total of their live daytime and recorded prime time highlights.)
Paris outperformed Comcast’s coverage of the COVID-delayed, Tokyo Games held in 2021 by 76 per cent. The increase in streaming viewership stateside is the real eye opener. The 19.1 billion minutes viewed on Peacock surpasses the 16.8 billion minutes watched on that same service for all previous Olympics in the streaming era, winter and summer combined.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that the American team was very successful, beating all other nations in total medal count, as well as appeances on camera by Snoop Dogg.
CBC TV data sources: Numeris TV PPM, Total Canada, 2+, July 25-August 4, 2024; Numeris TV Meter, August 3rd, 2024, CBC Total & RDS+, A2+, Sa 1p-3:50p, Total Canada, CumeRch, generated by InfoSysTV. Digital Data Source: Adobe Analytics, Paris 2024: All Platforms, July 25 – August 5, 2024.
