Best Olympic Program, Best Olympic Feature & Best Digital Offering Win Gold
Best Olympic Athlete Profile and Best On-Air Promotion Win Silver
STAMFORD, Conn. – December 8, 2014 – NBC Olympics won five prestigious Olympic Golden Rings awards – three golds and two silvers – including gold for Best Olympic Program, tonight in Monte Carlo, Monaco, at the International Olympic Committee’s biennial awards ceremony. NBC Olympics Executive Producer Jim Bell was in attendance in Monte Carlo to accept the five awards on behalf of NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus and the entire NBC Olympics division.
NBC Olympics won gold in the following three categories for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia:
- Best Olympic Program: NBC Olympics presented a Winter Olympics-record 18 days of programming, which featured an unprecedented 1,500+ hours of multiplatform coverage on the NBC broadcast network, four cable channels (NBCSN, CNBC, MSNBC and USA Network), NBCOlympics.com, and the NBC Sports Live Extra and NBC Olympics Highlights and Results
- Best Olympic Feature: “Winter’s Theatre” opened NBC’s coverage of the Sochi Olympic Games. Voiced by Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-winning actor Peter Dinklage, the tease welcomed the audience to the Games, and introduced them to the history and culture of Russia.
- Best Digital Offering: NBC Sports Group’s digital platforms amassed nearly 62 million unique users (61.8 million) – a record for a Winter Olympics and topping the 2010 Vancouver Games by 29% -- and more than tripled the hours of video consumption for Vancouver. The USA-Canada Men’s Semifinal Hockey stream amassed over 2.1 million viewers.
NBC Olympics also won two silver awards: Best Olympic Athlete Profile for its feature on Canadian freestyle skier and two-time Olympic gold medalist Alex Bilodeau and his brother Frederic, and; Best On-Air Promotion for NBCUniversal’s Symphony initiative, which leverages the company’s promotional resources to drive awareness to key events.
The Olympic Golden Rings are awarded by the IOC biennially to honor broadcasters for their outstanding coverage of the Olympic Games. Monday’s awards were specifically for Sochi.
This year, clips from countries around the world were judged by an international jury, with winners receiving their prizes in Monte Carlo, Monaco, in the presence of IOC President Thomas Bach. Members of the IOC Radio and Television Commission attended together with representatives from the Olympic rights-holding broadcasters, the Organising Committees for the Olympic Games in Sochi, Rio, and Pyeongchang, International Sports Federations and the City of Monte Carlo.
NBCUniversal’s coverage of the 2014 Sochi Games generated 242.3 million media exposures across the platforms of NBCUniversal – a 3.5 million increase over the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. NBC produced the most dominant primetime Winter Olympics performance on record by a broadcast network in viewership, household rating, and the Adult 18-49 demo (based on People Meter, which dates to 1987).
-NBC SPORTS GROUP-