The Women’s Olympics? A Gender Analysis of NBC’s Coverage of the 2012 London Summer Games

This study examines NBC’s U.S. prime-time broadcast coverage of the 2012 summer Olympic games for gender equality and compares that coverage to previous years. Olympic coverage is particularly important to female athletes because many receive little media attention beyond Olympic competition. The study found that, for the first time since 1996, NBC gave more airtime to women’s sports than to men’s sports. However, most of that coverage devoted to women’s events was confined to “socially acceptable” sports.