“Olympics on Oxygen” is hosted by Washington’s own Lindsay Czarniak of NBC4, who nabbed a host gig in only her second Olympic assignment for NBC. Czarniak is clearly a rising star at NBC; besides her role as a host on Oxygen she also is doing a number of features from Beijing for the network.
Olympics on Oxygen can be seen Monday-Friday nights from 6pm till 8pm the rest of this week.
As the host of the Olympics on Oxygen coverage she sets up the heavy sale for the events on NBC primetime. Prominently featured are a summary of previous results of the US Gymnastic Team events. “Ring the Bella” with legendary gymnastics coach Bella Karoli and NBC analyst Mary Carillo showcases the news from the Olympic gymnastics camp and interviews the athletes.. The goal here clearly is to hype the up coming events that viewers will see on the NBC prime time broadcast that follows this warm up on Oxygen.
“Olympics on Oxygen” will showcase men’s and women’s tennis and synchronized swimming to round out their female targeted programming.
“Olympics on Oxygen” provides a mechanism to move NBC’s coveted 18-49 year old female audience into their primetime coverage. It also happens to be entertaining and informative, enough so that it is worth watching whether you are a woman or a man.
This Olympics games will be known for two things. Michael Phelps and new NBC technology. I spoke via email from Beijing with NBC Executive Producer for the Olympics David Neal about his thoughts on the coverage of The Beijing Games: “To me, the biggest technical innovation is the fact that these are the first-ever Olympics broadcast 100 percent in high definition .All 34 Olympic sports from all 37 Olympic venues throughout China are 100 percent in HD, it’s really a remarkable evolution of the technology. So that’s a terrific technology development for us and ultimately for the viewers as well. Our technical experts tell me that the benefit of being in HD will be felt all the way down the chain. So not only at the top of the delivery chain where people are watching in HD, but down to standard def and even all the way down to watching something on your handheld phone. If you’re watching a 10-second clip of a replay of a race, the fact that the source material began in HD, the trickle-down effect benefits every delivery platform. So that’s very exciting for us.”
So for NBC it has been a golden Olympics ratings wise, sponsorship wise and in technology, not a bad two weeks.
