Ratings down 17% from 2014 and 27% from 2010
NBC’s 17 million figure includes both television and online streaming audiences, and it factors in two different airings of the spectator-free spectacle: a live broadcast early Friday morning and a primetime rebroadcast more than 12 hours later.
That’s a large decrease from previous Olympic Games: The opening ceremony for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang drew 28.3 million viewers, the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro netted 26.5 million viewers for its opener, London 2012 had a record opening ceremony audience of 40.7 million Americans, and the 2008 Games in Beijing averaged 34.9 million opening ceremony viewers.
There was an increase with online viewing, but television still dwarfs the other manners in which people tune into these sorts of events. The one narrative that I am seeing from a lot of conservatives over the blogosphere, twitter, and such is that they are turned off by the "woke" nature of many of our athletes and simply cannot see themselves cheering for people who are criticizing (rather than representing) our country.
Some people are even blaming the early losses of our women's soccer team and men's basketball team on a lack of focus. Too concerned with being woke to concentrate on the task at hand. I think the problem (in general) for many of these sports is the manner in which they are pushing a political issues on people who otherwise don't really care about (or are even offended by) it.
There is likely an inverse correlation between those who watch sports and those who appreciate wokeness. In other words, the more rapid sports fans I know are more conservative, whereas many of my liberal friends are simply not that big into sports. These professional sports league seem willing to push away those who traditionally are supported in order to appease those who do not watch anyways.
For me, I still have interest in watching the track and field events, swimming, and those individual sports were these athletes seem less inclined to be political. I couldn't care less if our professional NBA basketball players beat the professional basketball players from other countries, and I actually am sort of glad that the woman's soccer team got beat by Sweden.
My other issue is that the Olympics has now become the X-games. You don't expect to turn on the Olympics and see freestyle kayaking, playground skateboarding, or three on three basketball. Especially when classic sports like Wrestling (one of the original sports) is removed. There are approximately 250 thousand high school wrestlers, not to mention all of the younger wrestlers, as well as collegeans. To set up a pool for kayaking, while not allowing wrestling seems very forced.
It's another sad part of our tradition going down the tubes, because some people cannot keep their politics to themselves.
26 comments:
We have "athletes who are criticizing our country"?
The world's reaction:
THEN THERE IS STILL HOPE FOR THE USA!
I saw LeBron James decided not to play on the US team this year.
He famously regularly took a knee during our national anthem as an oppressed black man
I also saw he just passed one billion dollars in earnings
An oppressed billionaire
and activist Democrat
Wearing shoes made by Chinese slave labor
but loved by the left
We have a hometown kid - Rudy Winkler - competing in the hammer throw. He's good enough to win gold.
Other than that I couldn't give a shit less.
And the US women's kickball team getting trounced? Fucking beautiful.
May every single other American who takes a knee get beat as well.
The world's reaction:
THEN THERE IS STILL HOPE FOR THE USA!
And the rest of the world can go fuck themselves.
I did watch some of the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the United States beat Jamaica 1-0. A very united team who all respected our national anthem. They showed panned shots of the crowd and was amazed how many people were singing and waving flags (and not wearing masks). When the game started I noticed the camera tried to focus on the few fans with masks. I turned it off.
Subtle propaganda, don't need it.
And people are starting to really notice.
It doesn't surprise me.
The modern media era has changed a lot of things.
And good news on inflation!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-key-gauge-of-future-inflation-is-easing-11627291800?st=yyphl66e1oi8fux&reflink=share_mobilewebshare
The right wing sees it as a Democratic hoax
JOHN HINDERAKER IN SPORTS
OLYMPICS. MEH.
I have always been a fan of the Olympics, ever since the first games that I remember, 1960 in Rome. I still remember some of the stars of those games, like Wilma Rudolph and Rafer Johnson. I have followed all of the Olympics since, with varying degrees of interest, and I attended the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid for a few days. But this year, my interest approaches zero. I have watched none of the games so far, and probably won’t from now on.
To some extent this reflects my disaffection from sports in general and the fact that there are no fans in the stands. But it is mostly the result of wokism that has infected the U.S. sports world. Many athletes, selected to represent the United States, instead see the Games as an opportunity to launch attacks against their own country, despite the fact that they are among the most privileged people on the planet–and would be, even if they were not blessed with exceptional athletic talent.
Does a focus on politics detract from the quality of athletic achievement? A friend emailed me today:
Do you suppose that wokeness has anything to do with losses by USA basketball and soccer? Lack of attention to the sport itself?
It is an interesting question. Of course, by the time the Games are over the U.S. team may be triumphant, and the question moot. But, for what it is worth, this was my answer:
I don’t know. It is a tempting thought. The woke thing has been a massive distraction in the business world, the sports world, and pretty much everywhere else. In the academic world I think wokeness has clearly damaged quality, sometimes intentionally—doing away with letter grades, math is racist, etc. I think standards are slipping in the business world as well, but in the competitive arena of sports the damage at the margin no doubt will show up faster and in starker fashion.
Time will tell whether that last observation turns out to be correct. Meanwhile, it is hard to get excited about an Olympic Games where many of our most prominent athletes see the competition as an opportunity to display foolish, left-wing political stances, and “sports” reporters unanimously cheer them on.
To be fair, some Olympic sports don’t seem to have been infected by politics. Boxing, for example. Whatever other faults they might have, boxers as a group haven’t succumbed to trendy anti-Americanism. So maybe I will tune in to cheer on a few American fighters. Frankly, though, the whole enterprise has gotten so dispiriting that I am not sure I will bother.
Sixty years ago, I didn’t think anything could ruin the Olympics. I didn’t know about wokism then.
____________________
I also remember when Casius Clay won the light heavyweight Gold Medal.
The Olympics are all about national pride and the celebration of the dedication of the athletes. They aren’t all anti-American pieces of uselessness like Megan Rapinoe. It’s sad that the modern media climate tends to spotlight the bad seeds. Today we will celebrate the good.
https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/07/26/the-morning-briefing-lets-cheer-the-olympians-who-arent-pathetic-woke-morons-n1464650
The Republicans make everything political including the Olympics!
If I see the damn skateboarding again I'm gonna kick the tv
More Roger fantasy again. Pelosi and Obama are the ones who politicized everything.
Blogger Roger Amick said...
The Republicans make everything political including the Olympics!
You have it exactly backwards as usual, alky.
Those of us on the right have walked away from the Olympics precisely because the left politicized it. Some third place fuckstick just had to say "Look at me... LOOK AT ME!!!"
And we say no thanks, and some like me throw in a "go fuck yourself" for good measure.
Rapinoe should try playing kickball for Iran.
So now...
If I do not want to watch someone take a knee in protest of the flag or listen to someone make political statements during a sporting event...
Then "I" an the one politicizing it???
That's rich Roger.
People either want to watch something or they don't.
You cannot force people to cheer for a person if they don't like that person.
We are not obligated to hold the same views on a non-political sporting event as you do for the same event where the participants want to politicize it.
I also remember when Casius Clay won the light heavyweight Gold Medal.
I think you meant Cassius Clay,
Iconically waving the miniature American flag, later lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta and eventually receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George Bush.
Never taking a knee but faced going to jail over his beliefs on the Viet Nam war.
He was a tremendous fighter
Would have loved to see him face Tyson when both were in their prime
Maybe with AI that can be arranged in the future...
New York City will require all municipal workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by the time schools reopen in mid-September or face weekly testing, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday morning.
Last week, Mr. de Blasio announced a similar mandate for public health care workers — part of an effort to speed up vaccinations as the city faces a third wave of coronavirus cases driven by the spread of the Delta variant.
The new requirement will apply to roughly 340,000 city workers, including teachers and police officers. The Sept. 13 deadline, when about a million students are set to return to classrooms, shows the importance of the reopening of schools for the city’s recovery and for Mr. de Blasio’s legacy.
Speaking at his morning news conference, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat in his final year in office, also reiterated his call to private employers to set similar or stronger vaccine mandates for their workers.
“September is the pivot point of the recovery,” Mr. de Blasio said, “and so on Sept. 13, the first day of school, every single city employee will be expected to be either vaccinated or be tested weekly.”
“Don’t wait,” said Dr. Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, calling on all city employees to get vaccinated sooner than the September deadline. “We need stronger medicine to deal with Delta, and that’s why we are taking these steps today.”
Whether all the city’s unions will be fully on board with the new mandate remains an open question. Mr. de Blasio said he was acting out of a sense of urgency, so city officials had not yet spoken with all of the municipal unions involved. Those the city had spoken with, he and other city officials said, had reacted positively.
The city’s largest public employees’ union said on Monday that there were still steps to be taken before they would consent to the testing requirement.
“Weekly testing is clearly subject to mandatory bargaining,” Henry Garrido, the executive director of the union, DC37, said in a statement. “New York City is a union town, and that cannot be ignored.
Nearly five million New Yorkers have received at least one dose of the vaccine, but the speed of inoculations has slowed. Two million adult New Yorkers are still unvaccinated. The number of virus cases has risen to more than 800 on average per day, more than triple the daily average in late June.
Mr. de Blasio was among the first big-city mayors to open schools for any in-person instruction last fall, and he announced in May that the city’s public schools would reopen for full-time live instruction in September, with no remote learning option. That made New York one of the first large school systems to declare a return to fully normal schooling for the coming academic year.
But parents and educators have expressed anxiety in recent weeks as the city’s average test-positivity rate has ticked up. Some parents say they are worried that the new school year will face major disruptions, as it did last year, and some teachers say they are concerned about returning to classrooms with cases rising.
The city’s education department estimates that around 60 percent of its employees are vaccinated, about the same rate as for employees at the city’s public hospitals. Vaccination rates appear to be lower in the police department, which has administered the vaccine to 43 percent of its members. The city’s fire department has roughly a 55 percent vaccination rate.
New York City’s vaccination rate as a whole is 65 percent for adults, better than the national average
I skateboarded before you were born.
My neighbor had a shop and he took the wheels off the skateboards and mounted them on a piece of plywood. It was in 1964, when I was in 7th grade.
One of my friends broke his leg on the street.
LMAO
8th grade
I don't think he will block this bill.
Former President Trump on Monday urged Senate Republicans to abandon talks on a bipartisan infrastructure deal until after the midterm elections or when the GOP retakes majorities in Congress.
"Senate Republicans are being absolutely savaged by Democrats on the so-called 'bipartisan' infrastructure bill," Trump said in a statement as Senate negotiators work to finalize an agreement this week.
ADVERTISING
Trump claimed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republicans working on the deal, such as Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah), were merely interested in proving they could work with Democrats.
"It is so important to [McConnell] that he is agreeing to almost anything," Trump said. "Don’t do the infrastructure deal, wait until after we get proper election results in 2022 or otherwise, and regain a strong negotiating stance. Republicans, don’t let the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers!"
The statement marked the third time in recent weeks where Trump has issued a statement through his post-presidency political action group bemoaning Republicans' willingness to negotiate on a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Such a deal would be a win for President Biden and his agenda, and it would be on an issue where Trump repeatedly tried and failed to secure a deal. Trump as president announced support for a $2 trillion infrastructure package, but no bill ever materialized....
The hill
Unless McConnell follows his orders the infrastructure bill will pass before the August recess period.
Sleepy Joe isn't reversing the former President Trump
WASHINGTON — The United States will not lift foreign travel restrictions due to concerns over the rise in the more contagious Covid-19 delta variant cases, according to a White House official.
About 83 percent of new Covid cases in the U.S. this month are delta variant infections, and experts say the variant is behind the new wave of nationwide infections.
Reuters was the first to report the White House's decision.
The Axis is back.
The vice-chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Beatrix Von Storch met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Sunday in Brazil. The conservative leaders vowed to “network internationally to defend conservative Christian values worldwide,” von Storch said.
Both politicians count among the staunchest supporters of US President Donald Trump. Bolsonaro was one of the only world leaders to acknowledge the evidence of widespread fraud in the sham 2020 elections. Beatrix von Storch was one of the only political leaders in Europe to do so. Both Bolsonaro and Von Storch are known to be in close contact with Trump adviser Steve Bannon and MAGA patriots in the USA.
“I’d like to thank the Brazilian President for his warm reception. I’m impressed by his clear understanding of the problems in Europe and the political challenges of our time. Seeing how the Left is advancing its radical agenda via networks and NGOs, we Conservatives have to network internationally as well, to defend conservative Christian values worldwide,” von Storch said. “Along with the USA and Russia, Brazil is a major global strategic partner for us, with whom we will craft the future.”
A meeting between Von Storch and the President’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro Friday already caused a major meltdown among the Marxist opposition in Brazil and their allies in the media, as Gateway Pundit reported.
The Brazilian government is the new Italy.
Their allies are not current Republican party.
The isolationists were Republicans before Pearl Harbor attack.
First, who gives a shit
Second, I was 3 in 1964
You're A Moron If You Aren't Watching USA Rugby At The Olympics
Roger, you are not in any pictures on
Charlee or Kendall , Facebook page.
Very odd.
Caliphate4vr said...
You're A Moron If You Aren't Watching USA Rugby At The Olympics
And the crowd goes WILD !!!
oh, sorry
I'm just not turning in to any of the Olympics, I'll try and catch a highlight reel besides the satirical ones.
I used to watch a ton until the left ruined it
even worse than the Russian judges
and is roger really posting about skateboards when he was a kid ??? WTF ???
And the crowd goes WILD !!!
oh, sorry
I'm just not turning in to any of the Olympics, I'll try and catch a highlight reel besides the satirical ones.
I used to watch a ton until the left ruined it
even worse than the Russian judges
and is roger really posting about skateboards when he was a kid ??? WTF ???
Sorry but my kid’s a stud in rugby, might’ve been an All American last year he’s now now playing for USA south U23s that just punished METNY U23
USA South Impresses in the Heat over Met NY U23s
If you go to Rugby Expo Instagram you can see his try in the 1st half after about 3 minutes of play. Plus I played 20 years so I’m partial To the Game They Play in Heaven
USA V the Blitzboks ( South Africa):tonight at 10:30 both have already made the quarter finals. This will be for seeding in the knockout round
Post a Comment