Viewers of the Paris Olympics will expect to see plenty of Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Sha’Carri Richardson and LeBron James when they tune into NBC later this week to watch the athletic extravaganza. They may also get glimmers of another familiar visage: Hoda Kotb.
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NBC plans to feature a “Hoda-cam” as part of its efforts to cover the 2024 Games. Viewers may see shots of Kotb watching the U.S. women’s gymnastics team — long one of her favorites — and interacting with the families of Olympic hopefuls.
The “Today” co-anchor learned about the new feature last week, at the same time as her colleagues Savannah Guthrie, Craig Melvin and Al Roker — as well as a reporter from Variety who was meeting with the quartet and “Today” producers to learn about the morning-news mainstay’s plans for covering the 2024 Olympics after the group had completed a photo shoot for a “digital cover” for the show’s online counterpart. NBC has U.S. rights to cover the spectacle as part of a deal that lasts through 2032.
Her surprise was palpable. “Whaaaat?” asked Kotb, using one of her signature phrases.
There’s more to “Today” traveling to Paris than a morning-news stunt. The Olympics typically give the program a shot of energy in TV’s never-ending battle to win A.M. audiences. NBC has rights to show the Paris Games; Olympic clips and highlights; and interviews with winners. Which means “Good Morning America” on Disney’s ABC and “CBS Mornings” on Paramount Global’s CBS do not. So “Today” gains “the ability to reach younger audiences,” says Libby Leist, the NBC News executive vice president who oversees the morning franchise. “Sports in this environment is unexpected. Everyone wants to know what’s going to happen next,” Leist says. “We are going to be here for that.”
And not just on TV. “Today” is bringing a social-media producer to the Olympics for the first time, part of a bid to get Guthrie, Kotb, et al. trending on Instagram and TikTok. Some of that could be sparked by the “Hoda-cam,” also a new concept. With larger-than-usual audiences tuning into the Olympics across linear and digital venues, says Leist, various NBC producers “all have the same goal: to reach different audiences in as many ways as possible.”
At least one recent Olympics broadcast did not necessarily have the desired effect. During the 2022 Winter Games from Beijing in 2022, “GMA” was the most-watched morning program during the first week of the event — the first time since the week of Feb. 7, 1992, that the ABC show won the most-watched title during an Olympics period.
In the recent past, a series of Olympics telecasts from Asia have worn on the luster of NBC’s U.S. Games efforts. No families could sit in the stands during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics due to the coronavirus pandemic, and recent sites including Beijing and PyeongChang meant American audiences were hard-pressed to watch live competitions taking place during offbeat viewing hours.
Now, there’s a sense at NBC and its parent company, Comcast, that the Olympics are poised to benefit from new conditions. Organizers in Paris will set the Games among famous landmarks, like an opening parade down the Seine. And families will be back in the stands.
“Today” will work to nab new viewers at an interesting moment in the morning-news fray. While ABC’s “Good Morning America” continues to be the most-watched program in the genre in the U.S., it has been ceding some of its more valuable viewers, those between the ages of 25 and 54, the type advertisers favor most in news programming. CBS, long the third-place entrant in the broadcast-news morning wars, has been picking some of them up. Meanwhile, CNN has narrowed its morning approach after many years of trying to compete more broadly with its broadcast counterparts. Earlier this year, the network cancelled its latest A.M. entry , and now relies on a Washington-based program anchored by Kasie Hunt that is heavy on politics.
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The Olympic feat for “Today” will be to lure younger viewers to its host quartet interacting at the Eiffel Tower, where they will share a studio with NBC Sports, and to generate buzz they interact with athletes and visit various Paris attractions. Celebrity chef Ina Garten is likely to turn up to help some of the hosts navigate Paris attractions.
Each morning can serve as a recap of whatever happened in the Games the day before, says Guthrie — with some surprises. “If you saw somebody win the gold last night, chances are you’re going to see them on our set. We are their first stop, right off the medal podium,” she says. “It’s a moment in time where we get to be Team USA. We don’t hide our patriotism or joy to see our athletes.”
Roker expects to visit Parisian speakeasies and the Moulin Rouge. “It’s like summer camp,” says the broadcasting veteran, who has been holding forth at the Olympics since Calgary hosted them in 1988.
No one may work harder on camera, however, than Melvin. He will be on duty for the two-hour “Today” broadcast each morning (afternoon in France), and also for several hours afterwards, teamed often with Rebecca Lowe, the host of NBC’s Premier League coverage. “We will do three minutes off the top, and then go right into live action — gymnastics, swimming, men’s basketball, track and field — and we are going to lean heavily into it,” Melvin says. “It will be a lot less talking from the studio and a lot more action as we bounce around.”
The logistics can be tough. All four anchors will be in Paris for the first few days of Olympic Games, with Kotb and Guthrie also reporting during the glitzy opening ceremony, But Roker and Guthrie will head back to the U.S., says Leist, partly to have the latter reporting on the latest in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, and also to arrange “reunions” of U.S. athletes and their families at the New York City plaza outside NBC’s “Today” studios.
“Having our fans in the U.S. see that on the plaza is important,” says Leist, as is having Guthrie in the U.S. for important breaking news in the midst of an election cycle.
Guthrie and Kotb have handled difficult news moments even when far from home. In 2015, while broadcasting from the Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, the pair moderated one of TV’s hardest interviews, a live exchange with a young survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. “Today” has plans in place in case of somber news coverage, says Guthrie, including a special setup without an Olympics insignia. “We are a news show, no matter where we are and no matter what we are doing,” she says.
Paris, however, seems to offer the promise of something lighter. Roker enjoys the opportunity to take viewers “to places and events they’ve never seen before, or never experienced.” Going to the Olympics, says Kotb, is “like the most beautiful hang in the world.”
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