Half the World Watched the Opening Ceremony

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↵Broadcasts of the Olympics opening ceremony apparently did enormous on Friday -- overnight Nielsens show a 37 share for NBC’s American broadcast, which means like more than 1-of-3 people in your neighborhood who had nothing else to do on Friday tuned in. The whales and Stormtroopers and seizuriffic LEDs did even better in Australia, where more than half the audience watched it, despite ending at 2 a.m. Aussie time.
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↵NBC has also trumpeted the spit out of how much usage their Olympics website has done, which makes sense considering you can only get Olympic highlights on YouTube in far-flung countries. The Wall Street Journal reports Google agreed to help defeat evildoers who upload unauthorized Olympic vids to YouTube in exchange for the rights to host highlights in places like Nigeria and South Korea.
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↵Of course, who needs highlights when there are 25 hours a day of TV coverage? (Incidentally, the Russia-Italy women’s volleyball match is mystifying.)↵