With audience shrinking, NBC looks cautiously to Olympics in Asia

New York

NBCUniversal heads into the next three Olympics - all of them in Asia - faced with a critical question: Was the lower-than-expected primetime viewership for the just-completed Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro a fluke or a harbinger of fraying audiences over the next six years?

The answer, for now, is unknown, as NBC prepares for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing (which hosted the Summer Olympics eight years ago). No one is certain how much further consumers will alter their media habits, how much further television viewing will be diminished, or what new technologies will emerge during that time.

A further challenge to carrying an Olympics in Asia: the 13-14-hour time differences between the host cities and New York. "You'd be a lot less concerned if you were in the United States or in Continental Europe," said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research. "Ninety per cent of the content from Asia will be happening when we're asleep - and when we wake up, we'll see our Twitter feeds and news stories telling us what has already happ…