Nbc, 2012 Olympics | featured news

NBC's coverage of the London Olympics has blown away the most optimistic projections for audience performance in an increasingly fractured media landscape.

More than 16 million of the 30 million-ish people who were still watching NBC’s London Olympics about 11 p.m. Wednesday stuck around to see the ad-free unveiling of the network’s new Matthew Perry comedy, “Go On.”

NBC's hopes that the London Olympics would boost the struggling "Today" show have been rewarded and then some. The once-dominant morning news show beat ABC's "Good Morning America" by an average of 1.6 million viewers each day last week, the Nielsen ratings company said Monday. That's the most dominant week for "Today" since the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.

If NBC wants to show Usain Bolt's 100-meter victory on tape delay, the IOC says that's up to the network....

NBC is set to "break even" on its Olympics coverage, rather than lose money as previously expected, the head of NBCUniversal said Wednesday. The company had expected at one point to take a $200 million loss on the London Olympics. NBC paid $1.2 billion for the rights to show the games on TV and online in the U.S. It has said that it sold more than $1 billion in ads, breaking the record of $850 million set during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

To the charges of putting the interests of a corporate partner above those of a human user, Twitter pleads guilty. The social messaging service has apologized for suspending the account of Guy Adams, a correspondent for The Independent and vocal critic of the way NBC has covered the Olympic Games.

Twitter has suspended the account of a Los Angeles-based reporter for a British newspaper who included the email address of the NBC Olympics president and asked his followers to write him to complain about the network's coverage....

Preliminary estimates show that Saturday night's NBC telecast scored the highest ratings for the first evening of an Olympics competition outside of the United States. The Nielsen company said Sunday that its measurement of the nation's largest cities showed ratings for the Olympics telecast were up 8 percent over opening night in Beijing four years ago. A fuller measurement of viewership is expected later on Sunday.

The Twitter hashtag #NBCfail – about the American network’s Olympic shortfalls — is covering a lot of ground. But a key early frustration was the online viewing experience.

The Olympics opening ceremony was seen in the U.S. by 40.7 million people, making it the most-watched opening ceremony for a summer or winter Olympics.