Prime Time Olympics Coverage Focused on Female Athletes

Viewers tuning in to NBC's prime time coverage of the Olympics have been seeing more coverage of female athletes compared to the men, with 58.5 percent of the competitions during prime time involving women's sports during the first week of the Games through Saturday night (August 13th), and just 41.5 percent showing men's events.

That's according to research out yesterday (August 15th) from three college professors writing a book called, Olympic Television: Inside the Biggest Show on Earth.

One of them, University of Alabama sports media professor Andy Billings, said that in both Summer and Winter Olympics going back to 1994, the 2012 London Games was the only one until now where the women got more airtime than the men.

More women watch the Olympics than men, and that's been true for the Rio Olympics as well, with NBC's prime time audience having been 55 percent women so far. AP points out that a lot of the difference in women getting more coverage is due to their dominance in some of the sports NBC pays a lot of attention to.

That includes gymnastics, which had a dominant U.S. women's team competing compared to the less competitive U.S. men. Women's beach volleyball has also gotten a lot of prime time coverage while the men didn't, but that might be more about drawing male viewers to see the bikini-clad athletes compete.