By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Four boxes with live Olympics action filled Peacock’s screen during its “Gold Zone” show one afternoon this week — one showing women hammer toss competitors, another with long jumpers going aloft, a third with racers leaping hurdles and the last showing the minutes counting down in the U.S.-Germany women’s soccer match.
Occasionally producers punch up a concentrated look at one event. This was a gripping display of the breadth of Olympic sports, and it was hard not to get hooked.
Millions of Americans have shared similar experiences during the past week and half, powering a much-needed rebound for Peacock, the streaming service that was often the target of ridicule during Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 and Beijing in 2022.
“It’s been a real turnaround,” said Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Universal Media Group. With several days of competition remaining, NBC has surpassed 17 billion minutes streamed for the Paris games — the vast majority on Peacock — exceeding the streaming minutes for all of the previous Olympics combined.
Rather than detract from it, the chief executive believes Peacock has helped NBC’s television outlets to a ratings performance in Paris that has network honchos giddy with joy.
New thinking, new results
Lazarus ordered a teardown of Peacock’s Olympics operation, memorably conceding in June that consumers had reacted with “the big digital middle finger” to their past work. Peacock was hard to navigate and plagued with glitches. NBC also admits to failing to deliver on promises that Peacock would be the comprehensive Olympics experience, balking at showing some live events for fear it would cannibalize TV audiences — a traditional line of thinking that Paris has proven outmoded.
Led by a new executive team that included Matt Strauss, chairman of NBC’s direct to consumer unit, and Peacock President Kelly Campbell, they studied other sports and streaming outfits for new ideas.
“This in many ways is not their first bite of the apple, but they had a number of years to learn,” said Craig Moffett, analyst for the technology and media research firm MoffettNathanson. It’s clear they learned several smart lessons, he said.
The whip-around “Gold Zone” product, which has proven enormously popular in Paris, is a knockoff of DirecTV’s NFL “Red Zone,” including some of the same personnel. It matches the original’s high-adrenaline pace, taking viewers to noteworthy events — particularly when medals are decided.
Peacock offers several multi-view screens that show a handful of live events happening at the same time. While “Gold Zone” is curated by producers, on multi-view consumers can click on one of the boxes to concentrate on one event in particular. In effect, viewers can produce their own show.
Most importantly, they’re effective navigation tools leading people into all Peacock has to offer. Many viewers are entranced by events they knew little about, like when Peacock on Tuesday highlighted Cuban Mijain Lopez winning a fifth straight gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling. Such an achievement would be lost on television, since NBC focuses on high-profile sports like gymnastics, swimming and track.
“As a lifelong Olympic watcher and a lifelong Olympic broadcast/streaming complainer, really have to hand it to NBC for how incredible Peacock has been this go around,” Brandon Wall, a social media director at CBS News, wrote on X.
Kelsey McKinney of defector.com, which covers sports and culture, wrote that Peacock had created the perfect Olympic experience for someone like her.
“This is such a sensible approach — one that understands and respects the desires of an average viewer — it’s almost hard to believe an American network came up with it,” McKinney wrote.
The Games themselves have lent a hand
The Paris games have also afforded Peacock some advantages, including strong performances by the U.S. team and a return to crowds at events after COVID-19 restrictions. A time zone six hours ahead of the eastern United States also helped; NBC would have hated that in the past, since there are no live events available for its prime-time show, but it’s a bonanza for Peacock users in the afternoon.
More people working at home in the post-COVID era is also helping Peacock, Lazarus speculated.
“It’s probably not hard to imagine a lot more people are watching the Olympics from their home offices than they would from cubicles,” he said.
Peacock offers other Olympics features, including a personalized highlights package narrated by an artificial intelligence-generated voice of Al Michaels, and a comic look with Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson. Since the games have started, it has begun offering a collection of Snoop Dogg moments from NBC broadcasts, and a service that shows medal ceremonies since consumers requested it.
Peacock had 33 million paid subscribers earlier this year. NBC would not say how many people have signed up for the Olympics.
The key question for NBC Universal is how many of those new subscribers will be motivated to stick with Peacock after the games end. They don’t necessarily need a lot of those new customers to stay for it to be considered a success, Moffett said.
Lazarus said that some 70 percent of people who signed up for the service because it was broadcasting an NFL playoff game last winter wound up keeping their subscriptions for at least three months.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More