Less than a week into the Paris Olympics, NBC Universal executives are climbing atop the medal stand.
The event has been a significant success for the company broadcasting and streaming it in the United States. NBC already has set a record for advertising revenue, viewership is up significantly and its biggest fear — that people would tune out NBC's prime-time telecast because they could watch events live during the day — hasn't materialized.
“Clearly, the Olympics are back,” Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Universal Media Group, said Thursday. A strong performance by the U.S. team has helped, he said.
It's a relief to NBC, after the Beijing Winter Games in 2022 and COVID-19-delayed Tokyo Summer Games in 2021 were comparative duds. Through five days beginning with Friday's opening ceremony, the company averaged 34 million people a day watching on NBC, cable networks and Peacock, up from 19 million over the same period in Tokyo.
The company said it has taken in more than $1.25 billion in advertising revenue, its best-ever for an Olympics, and still has more time to sell.
“It's hard to paint it as anything but rosy,” said Andy Billings, a University of Alabama journalism professor and author of “Olympic Television: Inside the Biggest Show on Earth.”
The time difference — Paris is six hours ahead of the Eastern time zone — is ideal for people who want to watch events live during the day in the United States. NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said the network is heartened by the number of people watching during what is generally the workday back home; NBC is even happily taking credit for dwindled workplace productivity.
Live daytime coverage of the women's gymnastics team final reached 12.7 million people on NBC and Peacock, the network said. Even though it started on a Sunday morning, the U.S. men's basketball team had 11 million people watching its opening game against Serbia, more than the number of people who saw the gold-medal game from Tokyo.
Before this year, NBC had generally resisted showing events live unless they took place in the evening hours in the U.S. It was a particular issue in London in 2012, when NBC restricted live events to streaming; Lazarus declined the chance to second-guess those decisions.
“Times have changed and I think we are showing forward-thinking and being progressive in our case in how to produce and exhibit the Games,” he said.
So far the network is pleased with its prime-time numbers, even if those telecasts mostly consist of reruns of events available live earlier. On Sunday, for example, Nielsen said 18.5 million people watched NBC's prime-time telecast alone, out of 41.5 million who saw Olympics content all day on Peacock or any network.
“It doesn't matter if they know the results,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer of the Olympics. “They want to know the stories of the athletes and how things played out.”
Even though they are reruns, the prime-time telecasts can be easier to watch because they cut out some of the dead time, Billings said. NBC said it didn't have statistics yet on double-dippers — people who may have seen an event live then watched it again in prime time.
NBC said the number of people streaming “Gold Zone” on Peacock — a whip-around feed that takes viewers to different high-profile events, modeled after pro football's “Red Zone” show — has doubled since it premiered on Saturday.
If NBC Universal can keep a significant number of people who subscribed to Peacock for the Olympics from cancelling when the torch is snuffed out, that could make the difference between a success and a smash for the company, Billings said. So far, Peacock has avoided the technical glitches that plagued it in Tokyo.
The network is standing by its decision to make the Olympics more celebrity-focused, saying it creates a social media buzz that helps its telecasts. Cameras frequently catch movie and sports stars alike rooting on Olympic athletes from the stands.
“The only surprise so far is that a Kardashian hasn't made it to one of the events yet,” wrote Greg Braxton of the Los Angeles Times. “But it's still early.”
Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning's performance during the opening ceremony illustrated how it's a challenging job even for professional broadcasters. Solomon said roving correspondent Snoop Dogg's reception from fans and athletes alike has been positive, so expect plenty more airtime from him.
“We've been pleasantly surprised by his popularity, but you never underestimate Snoop Dogg,” Solomon said. “He's this wonderful mix of swagger and positivity.”
This story has been corrected to show that the London Olympics were in 2012, not 2016.
David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.
Snoop Dogg attends the women's pool C beach volleyball match between USA and France at Eiffel Tower Stadium at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, July 31, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria in an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah's communications network but that another company based in Budapest manufactured them.
Pagers used by the militant group Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding nearly 3,000.
Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated remote attack.
An American official said Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the conclusion of the operation, in which small amounts of explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.
The AR-924 pagers were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in Hungary’s capital, according to a statement released Wednesday by Gold Apollo.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” the statement read.
Gold Apollo chair Hsu Ching-kuang told journalists Wednesday that his company has had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years, but did not provide evidence of the contract.
At about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.
It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear if non-Hezbollah members also carried any of the exploding pagers.
The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Hezbollah, which has pointed the blame at Israel, said in a statement Wednesday morning that it would continue its normal strikes against Israel “as in all the past days” as part of what it describes as a support front for its ally, Hamas, and Palestinians in Gaza.
“This path is continuous and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday that it committed against our people, our families and our fighters in Lebanon,” it said. “This is another reckoning that will come, God willing.”
Hezbollah began firing rockets over the border into Israel on Oct. 8, the day after a deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel triggered a massive Israeli counteroffensive and the ongoing war in Gaza. Since then, Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged strikes near-daily, killing hundreds in Lebanon and dozens in Israel and displacing tens of thousands on each side of the border.
At hospitals in Beirut on Wednesday, the chaos of the night before had largely subsided, but relatives of the wounded continued to wait.
Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told journalists during a tour on hospitals Wednesday morning that many of the wounded had severe injuries to the eyes, and others had limbs amputated. Journalists were not allowed to enter hospital rooms or film patients.
The health minister said that the wounded had been distributed among all the area hospitals to avoid any single facility being overloaded and added that Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt offered to help in treating the patients.
Earlier Wednesday, an Iraqi military plane landed in Beirut carrying medical equipment, airport officials said. Abiad said the plane was carrying 15 tons of medicine and medical equipment.
Experts believe explosive material was put into the pagers prior to their delivery and use in a sophisticated supply chain infiltration.
The AR-924 pager, advertised as being “rugged,” contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications once advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before it was apparently taken down Tuesday after the sabotage attack. It could receive texts of up to 100 characters.
It also claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life. That would be crucial in Lebanon, where electricity outages have been common after years of economic collapse. Pagers also run on a different wireless network than mobile phones, making them more resilient in emergencies — one of the reasons why many hospitals worldwide still rely on them.
Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs said from the beginning of 2022 until August 2024, Gold Apollo has exported 260,000 sets of pagers, including more than 40,000 sets between January and August of this year. The ministry said the pagers were exported mainly to European and American countries and that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.
For Hezbollah, the militants also looked at the pagers as a means to sidestep what’s believed to be intensive Israeli electronic surveillance on mobile phone networks in Lebanon.
“The phone that we have in our hands — I do not have a phone in my hand — is a listening device,” warned Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a February speech.
He later added: “I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent. It is a deadly agent, not a simple one. It is a deadly agent that provides specific and accurate information. Therefore, this requires great seriousness when confronting it.”
Associated Press journalists Bassem Mroue and Abby Sewell in Beirut; Zeke Miller in Washington; and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Civil Defense first-responders carry a man who was wounded after his handheld pager exploded, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024.(AP Photo)
Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Apollo Gold, talks about the Taiwan company's communication products at the headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)
Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Apollo Gold, talks about the Taiwan company's communication products at the headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)
A police officer inspects a car in which a hand-held pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People gather outside the American University hospital after the arrival of several men who were wounded by exploded handheld pagers, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bassam Masri)
Lebanese soldiers stand guard at a street that leads to the American University hospital where they bring wounded people whose handheld pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
