The Olympic Competition Effect

There's been a lot of debate about NBC's Olympics coverage over the last week plus. The question that really seems to underlie it all, at least from my perspective, is, "Are the Olympics 'sports' or are they 'entertainment'?" They're different things for different people, but NBC's approach in primetime is clearly the "entertainment" one to a large extent.

I thought an interesting way to try to examine the nature of the primetime Olympic audience would be to look at the shows most affected by the Games' arrival. So here are the week-to-week changes against the Olympics for a large selection of broadcast and cable originals. These only include shows that aired both the week before the Olympics (July 20-26) and the first week of the Olympics (July 27-August 2).

Resilient (better than -11%)			Normal (-11% to -21%)			Slammed (worse than -21%)
Teen Mom	MTV	+13%	Perception	TNT	-11%	Snooki & Jwoww	MTV	-22%
Dallas	TNT	+8%	Alphas	Syfy	-12%	Sullivan & Son	TBS	-22%
The Closer	TNT	+5%	The Exes	TVLand	-12%	Royal Pains	USA	-23%
True Blood	HBO	+4%	Melissa & Joey	ABCFam	-12%	Jane By Design	ABCFam	-23%
Suits	USA	+2%	Pretty Little Liars	ABCFam	-12%	For Better or Worse	TBS	-24%
Common Law	USA	+2%	The Soul Man	TVLand	-12%	Warehouse 13	Syfy	-26%
Lost Girl	Syfy	+1%	Franklin & Bash	TNT	-14%	Beverly Hills Nannies	ABCFam	-27%
Real Housewives NYC	Bravo	+1%	Awkward	MTV	-14%	Tosh.0	Comedy	-27%
Big Brother Wed	CBS	+0%	The Newsroom	HBO	-17%	Covert Affairs	USA	-27%
Friday Smackdown!	Syfy	-3%	Real Housewives NJ	Bravo	-17%	Final Witness	ABC	-30%
White Collar	USA	-4%	Futurama	Comedy	-21%	Rizzoli & Isles	TNT	-30%
Breaking Bad	AMC	-5%				Louie	FX	-30%
Big Brother Sun	CBS	-5%				Bunheads	ABCFam	-33%
Burn Notice	USA	-5%				WWE Raw	USA	-34%
Necessary Roughness	USA	-7%				Anger Management	FX	-34%
Political Animals	USA	-7%				Secret Life	ABCFam	-35%
Workaholics	Comedy	-9%				Baby Daddy	ABCFam	-35%
Big Brother Thu	CBS	-9%				Wipeout	ABC	-36%
Weeds	Showtime	-9%				Wilfred	FX	-41%
Project Runway	Lifetime	-9%				Episodes	Showtime	-42%
						NY Med	ABC	-45%

The average week-to-week decline when adding up the ratings of all these shows was 16%, so my stab at a "normal" category just went ± five percentage points from there.

In looking at this table, I'm honestly pretty stumped. The shows that get "slammed" by the Olympics are a fairly diverse bunch. There are certainly some shows that we'd traditionally think of as male-skewing, like Tosh.0 and FX's comedy lineup. But then you have female-leaners like Snooki & JWoww and five of the seven ABC Family shows in that column too. Most of the USA and TNT dramas were relatively resilient to the Olympics, but then you have Rizzoli & Isles, Covert Affairs and Royal Pains that took huge hits. I briefly thought it seemed like the shows with what I'd consider more of a casual/disposable feel got hit pretty hard, but that wouldn't seem to mesh with a low-rated show like Louie that has a ton of enthusiastic Internet support.

So I can't come up with much of a narrative, but I thought I'd go ahead and post this just in case someone else can. I should note that week-to-week fluctuations on cable are usually pretty volatile anyway since the numbers are so small. The fact that the average movement among these shows is -16% indicates there's definitely a significant Olympic effect, but some shows may have just had a bad week or a really good week anyway.