Americans tune out Olympic ceremonies

I was happy to read, via NRO’s Jack Butler, that the ratings for Friday’s opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics were down 43 percent from 2018. Butler cites an article in Axios which notes that ratings for the opening ceremonies in Tokyo last summer were also down, but by only 6 percent.

Thus, Axios’ explanation for the mass tuning out of the China ceremonies — that “broadcast and cable TV viewership has been declining for many years as more people adopt streaming alternatives” — is wide of the mark. So is its other explanation — that a lack of fans in attendance makes watching the Olympics less exciting. There were no fans in Tokyo, either.

Disgust that the Olympics are being held in a genocidal, totalitarian nation is the most plausible explanation for the abysmal ratings, I think. Yet it goes unmentioned by Axios.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is doing all it can to generate interest in the China Olympics. Today’s sports page contains ten articles about the Games. Six are by Post reporters covering the Olympics from China. Four are from news services.

With so much of the sports page devoted to the Olympics, I was able to get through it in about three minutes, instead of the usual five to ten.

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