I probably don’t have to remind you, loyal reader, that we are living through the Cable-pocalypse: ESPN is laying off perfectly competent anchors as it goes full-blown D.T.C.; Diamond Sports is hanging on by a thread; last week David Zaslav wrote down the value of his cable assets by $9.1 billion… and Paramount wrote down its old Viacom portfolio by $6 billion just a day later. Last week, my partner Matt Belloni authored a piece entitled Hollywood Finally Faces the Cable-pocalypse devoted to the linear meltdown. The big one, it seems, is coming. 

Another insidious sign can actually be detected under the hood of Comcast’s extraordinary successful Olympics coverage. NBC, itself, accounted for nearly 118 billion viewing minutes throughout the event’s 19 days, according to a good source of mine. That’s a 46 percent increase from the Tokyo Games, in 2021, and simply an insane number given the media environment in 2024. Peacock also had a great run, streaming 23.5 billion minutes of the Paris Olympics, up 40 percent from all the prior Summer and Winter Olympics combined. Notably, however, Comcast’s cable networks could not keep that pace. In fact, total minutes viewed on the cable networks this year fell short of even the Tokyo Games: NBCU’s cable channels logged close to 31 billion minutes of viewing this year, down from 33 billion minutes during the summer of 2021.