The Olympics are among NBC’s crown jewel events, but this year’s Winter Games from Beijing threaten to thrust the network into the middle of a geopolitical nightmare.
The growing backlash against China, especially since the country last hosted an Olympics in Summer 2008, puts NBC in a dicey position of trying to celebrate the games while not ignoring the shortcomings of the host country. Even lawmakers have gotten involved. Last week, Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to NBCU CEO Jeff Shell and Olympics chief Gary Zenkel expressing concerns about how much influence the Chinese Communist Party would have on NBC’s coverage.
“NBC has this opportunity to go to China, and use this opportunity to cover issues that domestic Chinese journalists can’t cover. I mean, everybody wants to know about human rights issues in China,” Yaqiu Wang, senior China Researcher for Human Rights Watch, told TheWrap. “The Chinese government wants to use the games and the broadcast as a way to showcase their achievements, their governance model, how they do well on all kinds of things.”
China is facing intense criticism for its human rights abuses, particularly its treatment of Uyghur Muslims in its Western regions, which the U.S. has termed genocide. And the country has faced scrutiny for its treatment of top athletes like tennis player Peng Shuai, who has disappeared from public view since November after accusing a top Chinese official of sexual assault. The Chinese government has consistently denied all allegations of human rights abuses.
At the same time, athletes and journalists who are traveling to the Chinese capital are wary of being spied on by the government, so much so that many are resorting to bringing burner phones and laptops to avoid surveillance.
“Given the diverse participation in the Olympic Games, the IOC must remain neutral on all global political issues. The Olympic Games are awarded by the IOC Session, which consists of the (up to 115) IOC members, to a National Olympic Committee (NOC) and a host. That does not mean that the IOC takes a position with regard to the political structure, social circumstances or human rights standards in the country concerned.”
And the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — which forced the year-long delay of the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo to a crowd-free event last summer — still looms heavily over the competition, and the ability of some athletes to even compete. The pandemic, as well as China’s “zero-COVID” policy for allowing visitors, has also prompted NBC to keep all its on-air talent in the company’s Stamford, Conn., studio; the network largely did the same for last summer’s Tokyo Olympics.
Execs at NBC, whose parent company Comcast spent $7.75 billion to carry the Olympics through 2032, promised they won’t ignore the very serious issues surrounding China. During a press event earlier this month, Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of NBC Olympics Production, acknowledged “there’s some difficult issues regarding the host nation” but said the competition will “remain the centerpiece of our coverage.”
NBC will feature two experts on China: Andy Brown, editorial director of Bloomberg New Economy who has worked in Asia for 35 years (he was previously the China editor for The Wall Street Journal), and Jing Tsu, a Yale professor of China studies. “We have a Beijing-based bureau there. And NBC Olympics will cover the issues that impact the games as needed,” Solomon said. “It’s always important to remember that we have a record of not shying away from these topics.”
Even critics note that the network is essentially caught between a rock and a hard place. “NBC Sports still needs to include (China’s politics) as part of the backdrop, certainly on the opening ceremonies and whenever that seems to have an influence on the competitive events,” said Andrew Billings, a professor at the University of Alabama and co-author of the 2017 book “Olympic Television: Broadcasting the Biggest Show on Earth.” But, he added, “As much as people are very much concerned about the human rights violations in China, I don’t know of anyone who says: I want to tune in for 18 straight nights and hear about human rights violations.”
NBC is widely expected to suffer its lowest-rated Olympics, continuing an audience decline over the last few Games. The Tokyo Games were down 42% in viewers from the 2016 Games in Rio and the last two Olympics have been the least-viewed on record. “If you’re a big Olympic fan, the bigger driver to me might be are you fully recovered from the Tokyo Games? Are they happening too close together?” Billings said. “It’s Olympics fatigue.”
Between the reduced lag time from the last summer games, the lower interest in winter sports, the time gap for competition in China, the network is bracing for a significant drop in viewership. In recent weeks, NBCUniversal has told advertisers that TV ratings could be cut in half.
An NBC rep stressed that TV ratings are just one part of what it offers advertisers, who are not making ad buys solely on linear TV, but across multiple platforms, including Comcast’s struggling Peacock streaming service. NBC is partnering with iSpot.TV to provide additional viewership measurement, particularly on digital platforms, along with Nielsen. “We are creating an entirely new measurement framework that includes modern, accurate yardsticks so we can count all forms of engagement and equally measure the impact for our advertisers,” an NBC spokesperson said.
It is pretty typical for geopolitical issues surrounding the host country to become a main topic heading into an Olympics. In 2014, Russia’s poor track record on LGBTQ rights were front and center. The Rio Games were hit by a tsunami of bad press, between crime and government corruption to fears over the Zika virus.
But multiple experts told TheWrap they can’t recall an Olympics that had this level of bad feelings heading into it. For starters, as many as five countries, including the U.S., U.K. and Australia, are refusing to send government officials (known as a diplomatic boycott) to Beijing, in protest of China’s human rights abuses.
Billings argued that no host country has faced this much scrutiny since the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler. “I think you might be going back that far,” he said.
Rob Koehler, director general of the Global Athlete Group, an athlete advocacy group focused on social change, took China and the International Olympic Committee to task for the pre-games threats to restrain athletes right to free expression, particularly on issues related to China. In December, China warned that governments that are staging political boycotts will “pay the price” and also urged athletes against any kind of political statements, saying there would be “consequences.”
“If you look at the events leading up to the game and the actions by both the IOC and China, when it comes to supporting and protecting athletes, there’s not a lot of confidence that we have,” Koehler said.
Koehler noted that some of the biggest sports-meets-politics moments, from Jesse Owens winning the gold in front of Hitler, or John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s raised fists on the podium during the 1968 Games in Mexico, are included in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. “So while they’re celebrating it, they’re telling every athlete … you can no longer do that, which is totally against what the IOC pretends to promote,” he said.
He also criticized the IOC for caving to China with regard to tennis player Peng Shuai, who has disappeared from public view since November after accusing a top Chinese official of sexual assault. “We’ve seen how they reacted and acted with Peng Shaui,” he said. “The IOC played into what what China wanted so they’ve shown these favored to Chinese authorities over athlete rights.”
While there is “a huge responsibility” on NBC and other Olympics broadcasters to spotlight these very serious issues, Koehler said he does not expect too much.
Billings also points out that Beijing’s main competition for these games was Kazakhstan, signaling the difficulty the IOC has had in attracting host cities for events that have seen skyrocketing costs and diminished economic benefits for decades. “The IOC probably looked at that and said, either way, we’re dealing with problematic regimes,” Billings said. “Let’s go with the bigger nation, the bigger splash and the better resources. So I think that’s that’s kind of this uncovered story: Why does no one else outside of problematic regimes want it?”
Wang noted the difference between China from those 2008 Games and now. “The Chinese government in 2008 still saw the world accepting China as important: ‘We want to showcase we’ve become so much better, so much more prosperous.’ But now I think China feels very confident about its standing in the world,” she said.