re: Tokyo Olympics: US TV audience for opening ceremony falls to 33-year low

Seoul & Sydney Olympics faced the same time change challenges.

I recall those being fairly successful.

In prior years, I could easily name American competitors from a variety of sports, most of the women gymnasts, sprinters (often with an LSU connection), swimmers, etc.

This year, the only person I know who is competing on a U.S. team is Rapinoe.

(That's not a good thing.)

This will be the first time in my life that I will not watch the Olympics. I’ve watched every one since 84 LA.

I know Kevin Durant is a basketball player. I don’t know what club he plays for or what position he plays or his history.

I have no idea who Justin Thomas is. I’ll guess that he’s another basketball player.

Streaming argument aside - which is an important point - I think Americans don’t care. We went without sports (or some watered down bubble league) for several months and people realized, “hey I don’t miss sports nearly as much as I expected.”

Add to that, our country is divided right now largely between two groups: 1) soi progs who don’t like sports except cycling and soccer because those big dumb jocks were mean in high school, and 2) regular people who enjoy sports but not enough to sit through hours of political and social lecturing.

All combined means sports viewership is gonna take a pretty solid hit. Politics is the new sports (and religion); it’s can’t miss TV, every headline is Trump vs. Fauci or BLM or coronavirus, red vs. blue is the most spectacular game on earth with rabid fanbases who can’t get enough.

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What’s the streaming audience?

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According to Fox news this morning they said it was about a million. A dismal figure according to them.

16.7 million is lower than 22.7 million

That’s adorable.

Thank you for that.

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and it was the best tv I've seen in a couple years or more.
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Sorry you haven't been able to watch any TV for a couple of years or more.

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Let's be honest though...TV the last few yrs has been awful, so his comparison isn't a high bar. Especially realized this since the start of the wuflu. Taking sports off the watch list, and the best thing has been watching reruns of series that started 10-15 or so yrs ago. NCIS, Bones, Scorpion, etc. New stuff has gone so woke it's annoying. Though it's been interesting to see the initial start of the woke stuff with little PC nuggets dropped in those. Only currently made show I dvr is the SEAL team one.

I'm actually going to cut my cable in the next month or so due to it. Multiple reasons....just out watched all I can at this point ie no new good reruns left to watch and tv watching has been more of a crux since the shutdowns kept me home more than normal. I'll admit TV watching was a bad habit that I worked on breaking, but the shutdowns brought back more than I want.

And no this isn't the typical "cord cutting" move that has been going on as I don't do Netflix or other streaming platforms. Just going to get away from TV watching as a whole.