Hardly Breaking News: Older women love the Winter Olympics but Hispanics and African-Americans are completely ignoring Vancouver's pride and joy

Lacey Rose of Forbes magazine dropped a great little news nugget or two yesterday that I've heard expressed many times in years past by other media/sports writers I like and follow, but which bears special mention now as the Vancouver Winter Olympics chugs towards its Closing Ceremonies in a few days, hours after the U.S. vs. Canada ice hockey Gold Medal game results in somebody leaving disappointed, likely Team USA.

From her perch at the Forbes blog, The Biz Blog, -media, Hollywood and celebrity- Lacey first mentions that folks on Madison Avenue are very disappointed in the Olympics TV demos from an audience-reach p.o.v. because it's skewing way too older female, which makes a lot of their trendy ad buys nothing but wasted dollars down the drain.
Surprise!

Chicken or egg?
NBC Universal's on-air talent thinks nothing of talking incessantly about a female figure skater's dead mom and any resentment between U.S. Olympic ski team members Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso, prior to and since the Olympics started, Vonn and Mancuso, the Best of Rivals http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/sports/olympics/17ski.html , but now you're surprised that guys are tuning-out your soft-focus, pastel coverage after days of hearing you talk about the same thing?
"Among viewers 55 and older, ratings are 82% higher than the national average, according to Nielsen."

While on an errand late this afternoon, I heard a very well-produced and critical perspective on PRI's The World via WLRN-FM, http://www.theworld.org/ by Carol Hills titled
More live coverage of Olympics outside US, criticizing NBC Universal's absurd policy of tape-delayed (and overly-chickified) coverage compared to what foreign TV broadcasters are beaming back to their eager audiences around the world: LIVE coverage of everything as it happens.
You know, the method preferred by genuine sports fans around the world?

Hear Hills' persuasive piece for yourself at:
http://www.theworld.org/2010/02/26/more-live-coverage-of-olympics-outside-us/

In a related manner, the New York Times' Olympics Rings blog reports late this afternoon that Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl is asking many of the same reasonable questions that Carol Hills raises in her radio piece about consumer accessability:
Senator Asks NBC to Explain Internet Restrictions By Richard Sandomir
http://vancouver2010.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/senator-asks-nbc-to-explain-internet-restrictions/

On the odd chance that you don't already know, Herb Kohl is the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and -yes- is part of the Kohl family for whom Kohl's department store is named.
(He was the company president for most of the Seventies.)

Not surprisingly, he is and has been the wealthiest person in the entire U.S. Congress since first getting elected to the Senate in 1988, where he succeeded Senator William Proxmire, a true original whom we could use dozens of clones of today to make things right.

Sen. Kohl is the Chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee where his Midwestern values and moderate notions are a real plus: Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/about/subcommittees/antitrust.cfm

Later in her blog posting, Lacey Rose drops the nugget which caused me to take a few minutes today to write about a subject that I've been talking about for years with my media friends up in the D.C. area, especially my African-American reporter friends, so many of whom used to go with me to Baltimore for Oriole games via the MARC Baseball Train from D.C.'s Union Station, which deposited us right next to Camden Yards.

While older women are watching the Winter Olympics in numbers that Madison Avenue doesn't quite know what to do with, "Viewership among both Hispanic and African-American populations is 74% below the national average."

See Lacey Rose's entire post here:
Olympic TV Ratings: Bigger? Yes. Better? Maybe Not.
February 25, 2010
http://blogs.forbes.com/bizblog/2010/02/25/olympic-tv-ratings-bigger-yes-better-maybe-not/

I originally meant to post the informative daily video I receive straight from the Vancouver organizers from the very beginning of the Games but... miuex tard que jamais:



Live Olympic results are at: http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-schedule-results/

New York Times Olympics Rings blog, http://vancouver2010.blogs.nytimes.com/