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NBC has nothing to fear from President Donald Trump, said NBC Broadcasting and Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus at the NAB’s TV2020 conference in New York on Wednesday.
Last week, Trump threatened via Twitter to pull the broadcaster’s TV station licenses after NBC News reported that Trump said he hoped to greatly expand the U.S.’ nuclear arsenal.
“We have great confidence in our news organizations, both NBC News and our owned station news organizations. In these times of flood and fire, local news is more important than ever, not only for information but to save lives and inform local communities” said Lazarus. “We have great confidence what we do is right in the news organizations and we have great confidence that the FCC will stand by our First Amendment rights and support us.”
“I think editorial independence is a critical part of what we all do and I can transition it to my sports experience where typically NBC News is amongst the harshest critics at some of our product,” he added.
On Tuesday, FCC Chair Ajit Pai confirmed that the agency has no intention of revoking licenses over critical reporting.
“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast,” he said during an event hosted by George Mason University.
Besides leading the NBC Sports Group—which consists of NBC Sports, NBC Olympics, NBCSN, Golf Channel, NBC Sports Regional Networks, NBC Sports Radio, NBC Sports Digital, GolfNow and SportsEngine—Lazarus also has oversight of the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, which is composed of 30 NBC and Telemundo local television stations, as well affiliate relations, affiliate marketing, network operations and broadcast standards.
NFL Ratings Hinge on Young Viewers
Segueing into ratings, specifically the diminishing returns of the NFL, Lazarus points to changing habits, particularly among younger viewers, and an inflated benchmark where just two years earlier Sunday Night Football was delivering record ratings.
“We are seeing a more rapid decline in [adult] 18-to-34 ratings and that’s causing a decline in the total ratings,” he said. “And I think part of it is a continued proliferation of content across the internet and other ways for people to get their information. The fear we as broadcasters have is we are training people to follow sports and not to watch sports. If they can become satisfied with sports and highlights very simply through their phones and other means they are not going to spend time watching the game in its entirety.”
Three weeks into the current TV season through October 15, Sunday Night Football on NBC ranks second overall in primetime with 18.61 million viewers (behind 22.46 million for the pilot episode of CBS sitcom Young Sheldon), and first in adults 18-49, with a 6.6 rating/23 share in the demo, according to Nielsen. Comparably, Football in the year-ago three-week window was averaging 19.05 million viewers and a 6.3 rating in the demo.
Lazarus also confirmed that NBC’s upcoming coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang will, for the first time, go live across the entire country in primetime where he stressed a total audience delivery.
“Whether it is on broadcast television or through digital streaming or through cable advertising, those audiences will be cumed,” said Lazarus. “But the bulk of our viewing comes from traditional broadcast television, our stations and our affiliates.”
As for the future of ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) 3.0, which will support mobile television, 3D television, 4K UHD, high dynamic range (HDR), high frame rate (HFR), and wide color gamut (WCG), Lazarus is readying for the challenge.
“We have been in a leadership position of working on it and we do believe that it should be a voluntary standard, but our station group believes there is opportunity,” he said. “And we will, if implemented over time, work to find the right balance between where we sit today and 3.0.”
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