London Olympics Opening Ceremony Scores Ratings High
2012 Olympic Games - Opening Ceremony
The Danny Boyle-directed opening ceremonies of the London Olympics was a ratings juggernaut for NBC, receiving the highest overnight rating for a non-U.S.-based Olympic opening ceremony ever.
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In all, an average of 40.7 million people watched NBC's programming, according to Nielsen. This landed London at 7 percent higher than Beijing's, 28 percent higher than Athens', 24 percent higher than Sydney's and 15 percent higher than Vancouver's Game openers.
The Opening Ceremony was also a huge success for the BBC, beating out all other recent Game openers for the network, Deadline reports.
The program garnered an average 22.4 million viewers, the highest for BBC since 1998.
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The most-watched event of the program was Boyle's Isles of Wonder, which featured a parachuting Queen, multiple flying Mary Poppins, a Mr. Bean-and-Chariots of Fire montage, plus a performance by Paul McCartney.
What did you think of the Opening Ceremonies?