Battle of the Olympics Television Networks

August 1, 2012 | Comments Off

As much as many of us are enjoying following the trials and tribulations of the Olympic athletes, many of us are also bemoaning the television coverage.

Tape delays mean that some people have to wait five or six hours before they can watch an event. Tape delays also mean that sometimes the event results are released before the event has aired and the final results are spoiled.

And what about coverage? Can you find the sports you want to watch when you want to watch them? Is it in the  level of detail that you wanted to see those sports?

The end result is that everyone has their favorite channel to watch. Whether it’s the channel showing the most Olympic events around the clock, or the channel that pays just minimal attention by reporting only final results, you know where to go for your daily dose.

In this chart, which maps the social media sentiment of hundreds of thousands of online comments, we can quickly see which networks are winning the Network Olympics.

Right off the bat, we NBC with the largest circle in the upper left corner. The large circle means that they are enjoying the largest volume of conversations. Unfortunately, they are also enjoying the smallest percentage of positive messages and the largest percentage of negative messages. Sorry NBC. You’re clearly in last place.

However, the race for first place is tight. Many networks are in the ideal quadrant where the percentage of positive messages is high and the percentage of negative messages is low – Bottom Right. Fox and CTV fight it out for the optimum position with the highest number of positive messages and the lowest number of negative messages, but neither of them can compete with the volume of conversations that BBC has.

So who won the medals? Drum roll please….  The Bronze goes to Fox, the Silver to ESPN, and the Gold goes to BBC.

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