|
MONACO - THE Olympic Games in Beijing were followed by a record 4.7 billion television viewers across the world, according to sports programming experts meeting here on Tuesday.
Viewing figures were not affected by news coverage on the internet, they added at the Sportel convention for companies involved with any aspect of sports programming and sports content across all distribution platforms.
Mr Roland Faure, former president of Radio France, said: 'The explosion of viewing figures allowed the Beijing Games to beat all broadcast records, in quantity and quality, and to reach an unmatched number of television watchers.'
In the United States, the NBC station smashed viewer records, notching up 214 million over 17 days - a record for a sporting event in the USA.
The NBC website received tens of millions of hits every day, NBC Sports' David Neal said.
'These two types of media were complementary and 93 per cent of internet users went on to watch the Olympic Games on the television. It (the internet) was like a funnel for our programmes,' Mr Neal said.
The viewing figures for Beijing represent a 20 per cent hike on similar figures for the 2004 Games in Athens.
Figures for users of the internet, video on demand and mobile telephones showed 'exponential growth,' other specialists said. -- AFP
| 
