TORONTO – More than 15 million Canadians tuned in to watch Olympic coverage on CBC Television on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, claims the CBC.
The total number of people who tuned in at some point from the beginning of Friday’s coverage until midnight Sunday (programming which included the opening ceremony and the first two full days of competition), was 15.2 million people. But the numbers pale in comparison to China’s.
According to Reuters, the four-hour opening ceremonies on Friday night drew as much as 69% of China’s total audience of 1.3 billion, or 842 million viewers. China, which is largely served by state-controlled broadcasters, is forecast to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest ad market by 2010. Its three biggest markets: the capital Beijing, biggest city Shanghai, and Guangdong province have TV penetration of almost 99% of residents.
U.S. rights-holder NBC delayed telecasting the event for 12 hours in order to reach the larger prime time audience. The gamble paid off with the broadcast from Beijing now the most-viewed and highest-rated non-U.S. Summer Olympics opening ceremony ever, averaging 34.2 million viewers.
Back in Canada online streaming at CBC.ca is also proving to be extremely popular, with volumes approaching a quarter-million live streams per day.
Olympic fans can visit CBCSports.ca/Olympics 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the 2008 Olympic Games for comprehensive coverage, including breaking news, athlete blogs, in-depth reports, live and on-demand streaming, special features, and more.
