Scott Hamilton Breaks Down the New Science Behind Live Sports
The way we watch TV is changing, and that fact was glaringly apparent at this year’s Winter Olympics, which went down in history as the lowest-rated Games ever.
One-time figure skating gold medalist and current commentator Scott Hamilton joined Cheddar to discuss the numbers.
“How they’re measuring viewership is different now,” he told Cheddar Tuesday. “How do we know how many people are actually watching and being impacted by the Olympics? If it’s a second screen, if it’s internet viewing, it’s different.”
Ratings for the 2018 PyeongChang OIympics were down more than seven percent from the 2014 Sochi Games, according to [one report](http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/more-tv-news/2018-winter-olympics-ratings-are-down-but-nbc-is-still-happy/). The events averaged just over 22 million viewers this year, versus more than 23 million last time.
But Hamilton, who was relegated from NBC’s primetime figure skating coverage to its Sports Network’s “Olympic Ice” show, says the network was happy with the viewership overall.
“From where I was, and I was there in PyeongChang, they were happy,” he told Cheddar during the interview. “In the show that I did, the ratings for that particular time were quintuple what they received before.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/living-a-life-of-gold).
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