(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
I have not watched a minute of these Winter Olympics. That surprises me.
I grew up loving the Olympics more than any other televised event. Like others my age, Austrian skier Franz Klammer occupies a permanent corner of my sports memory. The USA hockey team’s defeat of the Soviet Union during the Cold War was astonishing to watch, even on tape delay in 1980 (people forget the failed spoiler alert!) And yes, I am fluent in the Hamill camel. The Olympics were not just sports. They were a shared national ritual.
That ritual feels weaker now.
The ratings are not collapsing. They are surging. NBC’s opening ceremony drew more than 21 million viewers, up sharply from 2022, and prime time is posting its strongest Winter numbers in more than a decade. By traditional metrics, the Games are thriving. But ratings measure reach, not resonance.
The Olympics once thrived on simultaneity. Millions watched the same edited prime-time broadcast and experienced the same crescendo together. The next morning, the country talked about the same moments. That structure created cultural weight. Today, some viewers stream events live on Peacock at odd hours. Others catch curated packages at night. Many encounter clips in passing on social feeds. Access has expanded. Urgency has shrunk.
Americans increasingly experience video on their phones through TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook. These platforms are fragmented and algorithm-driven, but they have become the closest thing we have to a shared commons. A clip that tears across all four simultaneously is the modern equivalent of a moment everyone saw on the same network at the same time. It is not the old togetherness. It is the new one.
NBC’s strategy is rational. The company paid billions for exclusive rights and is protecting that investment. Every event streams live. Prime time remains tightly produced around narrative arcs and American contenders. Official clips are distributed on NBC’s terms. Unauthorized highlights are quickly removed. Scarcity safeguards value.
The problem is that modern cultural momentum rewards ubiquity, not control.
The NBA floods platforms with highlights that are clipped, memed, and remixed within seconds. The NFL still owns Sunday nights because its biggest moments are unavoidable in real time. The Olympics operate behind a gate. If a snowboarder lands something astonishing at 3 a.m. Eastern, the viral window is short. If the clip circulates slowly or is flagged quickly, the moment fades before it can crest.
NBC has evolved technologically. Peacock is central. Live access is comprehensive. The philosophy of tight rights enforcement, however, remains largely intact. The platform changed. The posture did not. That tension sits at the heart of the issue.
The Olympics were designed for a broadcast era in which controlling distribution ensured dominance. In a fragmented digital ecosystem, dominance often flows from letting moments run free. Protecting exclusivity may preserve ad inventory. It may also suppress the organic explosions that keep an event culturally central.
The last reliable shared television ritual in America may be the NFL. Everything else competes with fragmentation. The Olympics once interrupted the sports calendar and the news cycle alike. Now they enter an already saturated landscape of infinite choice. Total access has turned a singular event into one more option.
The athletes are still extraordinary. The performances still push the edge of human capability. They deserve the kind of collective audience that once amplified their feats into national memory.
The fire is still there. The mountains are still steep. The skaters still spin under bright lights. What has thinned is the circle around the flame. The Olympics have not lost their grandeur. We have lost the habit of watching them together.
The post The Lost Ritual of the Winter Olympics first appeared on Mediaite.