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≡ NBC MIRRORING PARIS 2024 COVER PLAN ≡
“With Same Time Zone, Milan Cortina Programming Strategy Mimics Paris 2024″
The fourth sub-head in Wednesday’s NBC Sports announcement of its programming plans for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan, Cortina and elsewhere in Italy tells most of the story.
NBC saw an enormous success in 2024 with its all-live Paris Olympic format, spread across multiple networks and online and will essentially repeat the experience for the Winter Games next February:
● Live events all day on NBC
● All-event streaming coverage on Peacock
● Added coverage on USA Network and CNBC
The primetime show – “Primetime in Milan” – will run in the evenings, while the popular Peacock programming of “Gold Zone” and event multiviews will return as well.
As for the coverage on NBC:
“Milan Cortina 2026 will have more programming hours on the NBC broadcast network than any previous Winter Olympics. NBC will provide Olympic fans with at least five hours of daytime coverage every day featuring the most exciting events, including live coverage of figure skating, freestyle skiing, snowboarding, speed skating, and more.
“With Italy six hours ahead of the United States’ Eastern Time Zone – which is identical to Paris – daytime coverage will feature the most popular events live on NBC on weekend mornings and every afternoon.”
The primetime show will again run for three hours nightly.
NBC enjoyed a substantial rebound in Olympic popularity in Paris, where the network’s all-day coverage averaged 30.4 million viewers, vs. 16.9 million in Tokyo in 2021 (15.6 million in primetime).
For the Winter Olympic Games, NBC will be looking for a rebound from historically low audiences for the Beijing 2022 Games, held under difficult, Covid-19 conditions and in a bad time zone for U.S. viewers:
● 2014: 21.3 million primetime audience in Sochi (RUS)
● 2018: 19.8 million primetime audience in PyeongChang (KOR)
● 2022: 11.4 million primetime audience in Beijing (CHN).
U.S. interest in the 2026 Games should be buoyed by multiple factors, including what should be a very strong American team in alpine skiing, bobsled, cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, speed skating and the freestyle skiing and snowboard events.
The Milan Cortina Games will open on 6 February and run to 22 February, 2026.
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