By Stephen Battaglio, Los Angeles Times

The Paris Olympics have brought some joie de vivre to NBCUniversal.

For the first 13 days of the Games, the Comcast Corp.-owned media company averaged 32.2 million viewers across its TV and streaming platforms, according to data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. The figure combines the live coverage shown during the day and the taped highlights telecast and streamed in the evening.

The Paris number is 76% higher than the audience for the Games in Tokyo, which were delayed a year and held in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Olympics content streamed on NBC’s Peacock platform surpassed 19.1 billion minutes viewed, more than the 16.8 billion minutes watched on the service for all previous Olympics, winter and summer, combined.

The contrast with Tokyo three years ago could hardly be more stark.

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At that time, the pandemic still loomed large and the biggest U.S. star, gymnast Simone Biles, departed early from much of the competition due to mental health issues. Those who competed did so in front of empty spectator stands, depriving viewers of the emotion and passion that family members and fans provide during the Games.

In 2021, NBC had to give commercial time away to advertisers when the ratings came in lower than expected. The network typically holds back commercial time in the event that audience levels fall short of what brands are promised.

But this year, the ratings performance exceeded NBC’s expectations, and the network is reaping the benefits.

NBC was able to sell its reserve of commercials at an even higher price than the inventory purchased before the Games began. Among the major takers was the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who abruptly became the presumptive Democratic nominee last month and needs to quickly introduce herself to the public.

“It’s a nice piece of business for us,” Lazarus said in a telephone interview.

Eliud Kipchoge of Team Kenya, Gabriel Gerald Geay of Team Tanzania, Jie He and Shahoui Yang of Team People’s Republic of China run past Eiffel Tower during the Men’s Marathon during day fifteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Esplanade Des Invalides on August 10, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

The additional sales helped push NBC’s ad revenue well past the previous record of $1.25 billion it took in during 2021. The final number for Paris will be the largest ad revenue take for any TV event in history, an NBC representative said. (Super Bowl Sundays typically generate about $1 billion for the network carrying the game.)

NBC may have been fortunate that the Paris Olympics came along at a time when a deeply politically divided country could use a break.

Two weeks before the Games began, former President Donald Trump barely escaped an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally. Not long after, President Joe Biden made the stunning decision to pull out of his reelection campaign. Tensions are running high over Israel’s war with Hamas, creating fear over a larger military conflict in the Middle East.

Brent Magid, chief executive of the media research firm Magid, said a celebratory collective viewing experience may have been just what the public needed.

“The Olympics are an in-the-moment activity that happens to be very positive in a world that is thinking very negatively,” Magid said. “Consumers are looking for escape in their lives and this brings it in spades.”

A general view as inside the stadium as athletes participate in the parade during the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on August 11, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)

Having the City of Lights as a backdrop also helped. Athletes have been shown having fun on their off days, cheering on their competing comrades and hanging out with the network’s breakout Olympics coverage star, Snoop Dogg. Celebrities from Tom Brady to Lady Gaga have turned up in the crowd.

Peacock, which trails other major streaming platforms with around 34 million subscribers, is a major beneficiary from the success. NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said new subscribers sign-ups have surpassed expectations, although the company has not revealed that number yet.

Peacock streamed every sport live, including all 329 medal events. NBCUniversal enhanced the Peacock streaming experience by offering exclusive elements such as the addictive “Gold Zone” feature, which guided users to decisive moments in a variety of events as they happened, sometimes using multiple boxes on the screen.

Shamier Little, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Gabrielle Thomas and Alexis Holmes of Team United States celebrate winning the Gold medal in the Women’s 4 x 400m Relay Final on day fifteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on August 10, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Making a multitude of events available on demand satisfied the streaming audience that wanted the choice and convenience of on-demand viewing. But the Games’ performance also proved that people will show up for traditional TV if there is compelling drama they have to see in real time.

The gold-medal-winning performance of Biles and the U.S. women’s gymnastic team was watched by 12.7 million people across NBC’s platforms on July 30, even though it ran smack in the middle of the workday. The figure was an all-time high for a daytime Olympics event and topped the average audience for this year’s NBA Finals, which aired in prime time on ABC.

The number may have been helped by a behavioral shift left over from the COVID-19 lockdowns. More people are working at home — and what’s the harm of having some gymnastics playing in the background?

“It’s the content that’s precious, not the time of day,” said Lazarus. “If you exhibit in a way that’s interesting, people will show up.”

A general view of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games Cauldron, air balloon prior to the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on August 11, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images)

John Rood, chief marketing officer for Magid, said consumers’ willingness to turn on the TV at all hours will continue to benefit the Olympics as time goes on. “One’s ability to watch on their laptop or phone is only going to get more common in every passing four-year span,” he said.

NBCUniversal has the rights to the Games through 2032. The next Summer Games will be held in Los Angeles in 2028. The next Winter Games are in Milan in 2026.

Gymnastics has long been a strong draw for female viewers. But the Paris Olympics may also be benefiting from an overall increase in interest in women’s sports.

The wild popularity of Caitlin Clark, now with the WNBA, helped drive a record audience of 17 million viewers for NCAA women’s basketball championship game in March. (Clark’s exclusion from the women’s U.S. Olympic basketball team became a national topic of discussion.)

A Magid study conducted that same month showed that 60% of consumers said they are paying more attention to women’s professional sports. The figure was 57% for women’s college sports.

Karen Bass, Mayor of Los Angeles, waves the Olympic flag as Thomas Bach, President of International Olympic Committee, applauds during the Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on August 11, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)

NBC was also able to integrate entertainment figures into its Olympics coverage without generating a lot of pearl-clutching from sports purists. It helped the network deliver audiences of 13 million or higher in prime time, even though all of the competition shown was on tape.

Viewers embraced Snoop Dogg’s feel good vibe as he wandered through the events as the No. 1 U.S. Olympics team cheerleader. His role is long in the making.

The legendary rapper was part of the network’s Tokyo coverage in 2021. He has also developed a relationship with NBC by co-hosting a competition series, “The Great American Song Contest,” and serving as a coach on the upcoming season of “The Voice.”

Executive producer Molly Solomon and her team saw the potential to expand his role this year. “He obviously came these Olympics with an enthusiastic optimistic point of view,” said Lazarus. “Molly Solomon calls him the ambassador of happiness.”

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By WAFAA SHURAFA and SAMY MAGDY Associated Press

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli military ordered more evacuations in southern Gaza early Sunday, a day after a deadly airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in the north killed at least 80 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. The airstrike was one of the deadliest attacks in the 10-month war.

Hamas appeared to push back against resuming negotiations on Thursday on any new cease-fire proposals. In a statement, it urged mediators United States, Egypt and Qatar to submit a plan to implement what was agreed on last month, based on U.S. President Joe Biden’s proposal, “instead of going to more rounds of negotiations or new proposals that provide cover for the occupation’s aggression.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Israel has repeatedly ordered mass evacuations as its troops return to heavily destroyed areas where they previously battled Palestinian militants. The vast majority of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, in the besieged territory 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by about 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide.

The latest evacuation orders apply to areas of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, including part of an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone from which the military said rockets had been fired. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians and launching attacks from residential areas.

The humanitarian zone has steadily shrunk during the war with the various evacuation orders. Hundreds of thousands of people have crammed into squalid tent camps with few public services or sought shelter in schools, though the United Nations says hundreds of those have been directly hit or damaged.

Khan Younis suffered widespread destruction during an air and ground offensive earlier this year. Tens of thousands fled again last week after an evacuation order.

The new order came in leaflets dropped from the sky. As smoke rose on the horizon, hundreds of families carrying belongings in their arms left homes and shelters, seeking elusive refuge. One child carried a stuffed Hello Kitty doll as others walked through rubble-filled streets.

“We don’t know where to go,” said Amal Abu Yahia, a mother of three, who had returned to Khan Younis in June to shelter in their severely damaged home. It was the fourth displacement for the 42-year-old widow, whose husband was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their neighbors’ house in March.

She said they went to Muwasi, a sprawling tent camp along the coast, but couldn’t find space.

Ramadan Issa, a father of five in his 50s, fled Khan Younis with 17 members of his extended family, joining hundreds of people walking toward central Gaza.

“Every time we settle in one place and build tents for women and children, the occupation comes and bombs the area,” he said, referring to Israel. “This situation is unbearable.”

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Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, says the Palestinian death toll from the war is approaching 40,000. Aid groups have struggled to address the staggering humanitarian crisis, while international experts have warned of famine.

The war began when Hamas-led terrorists burst through Israel’s defenses on Oct. 7 and rampaged through farming communities and army bases near the border, killing around 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting around 250 people. Of the roughly 110 remaining hostages, Israeli authorities believe around a third are dead.

The conflict has threatened to trigger a regional war, as Israel has traded fire with Iran and its militant allies across the region. “I hope that they will think this through and won’t get to a point where they will force us to cause significant damage and increase the chances of war breaking out on additional fronts,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Gallant on Sunday, reiterating America’s commitment to defend Israel and noting the strengthening of the U.S. military force posture and capabilities in the region, according to the Defense Department. It noted Austin has ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and is telling the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to sail more quickly to the area. The Lincoln was expected in the region by month’s end.

In Lebanon, the Health Ministry said an Israeli strike near the southern town of Taybeh killed two people, without giving details. Israel’s military said it struck a cell of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Hezbollah announced the deaths of three militants, without details, and said it conducted rocket and artillery attacks on Israeli military positions.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has seen increased violence since the war began, Israel’s military said that an Israeli civilian was killed and another was wounded in a drive-by shooting. Hamas claimed the attack, saying it was a response to the strike on the school in Gaza.

Israel’s airstrike on Saturday hit a mosque inside a school in Gaza City where thousands of people were sheltering. The Israeli military said it killed 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. Hamas and Palestinian activists disputed that, saying two of the 19 were killed in earlier strikes and others were known to be civilians or opponents of Hamas.

Northern Gaza has been surrounded by Israeli forces and largely cut off from the world, and it wasn’t possible to independently confirm accounts from either side. European leaders and neighbors of Israel condemned the strike.

Samy Magdy reported from Cairo. AP journalists Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

By AMANDA SEITZ Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.

Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.

When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection intended to end the pregnancy. But it was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube would rupture it, destroying part of her reproductive system.

That’s according to a complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated a federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.

“I was left to flail,” Thurman said. “It was nothing short of being misled.”

Even as the Biden administration publicly warned hospitals to treat pregnant patients in emergencies, facilities continue to violate the federal law. The issue became a focus for the administration following reports of women being improperly treated in emergency rooms after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago.

More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations has found.

Two women – one in Florida and one in Texas – were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home. At least four other women with ectopic pregnancies had trouble getting any treatment, including one California woman who needed a blood transfusion after she sat for nine hours in an emergency waiting room.

The White House says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s health, despite state bans. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue.

Abortion bans complicate risky pregnancy care

In Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, medical and legal experts say the law is complicating decision-making around emergency pregnancy care.

Although the state law says termination of ectopic pregnancies is not considered abortion, the draconian penalties scare Texas doctors from treating those patients, the Center for Reproductive Rights argues.

“As fearful as hospitals and doctors are of running afoul of these state abortion bans, they also need to be concerned about running afoul of federal law,” said Marc Hearron, a center attorney. Hospitals face a federal investigation, hefty penalties and threats to their Medicare funding if they break the federal law.

The organization filed two complaints last week with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service alleging that different Texas emergency rooms failed to treat two patients, including Thurman, with ectopic pregnancies.

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Another complaint says Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz, 25, lost a fallopian tube and most of an ovary after an Arlington, Texas, hospital sent her home without treating her ectopic pregnancy, even after a doctor said discharge was “not in her best interest.”

“The doctors knew I needed an abortion, but these bans are making it nearly impossible to get basic emergency healthcare,” she said in a statement. “I’m filing this complaint because women like me deserve justice and accountability from those that hurt us.”

Conclusively diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy can be difficult. Doctors cannot always find the pregnancy’s location on an ultrasound, three separate doctors consulted for this article explained. Hormone levels, bleeding, a positive pregnancy test and ultrasound of an empty uterus all indicate an ectopic pregnancy.

“You can’t be 100% — that’s the tricky part,” said Kate Arnold, an OB-GYN in Washington. “They’re literally time bombs. It’s a pregnancy growing in this thing that can only grow so much.”

Texas Right to Life Director John Seago said the state law clearly protects doctors from prosecution if they terminate ectopic pregnancies, even if a doctor “makes a mistake” in diagnosing it.

“Sending a woman back home is completely unnecessary, completely dangerous,” Seago said.

But the state law has “absolutely” made doctors afraid of treating pregnant patients, said Hannah Gordon, an emergency medicine physician who worked in a Dallas hospital until last year.

“It’s going to force doctors to start creating questionable scenarios for patients, even if it’s very dangerous,” said Gordon. She left Texas hoping to become pregnant and worried about the care she’d get there.

Gordon recalled a pregnant patient at her Dallas emergency room who had signs of an ectopic pregnancy. Because OB-GYNs said they couldn’t definitively diagnose the problem, they waited to end the pregnancy until she came back the next day.

“It left a bad taste in my mouth,” Gordon said.

“Oh my God, I’m dying.”

In Thurman’s case, when she returned to Ascension Seton Williamson a third time, her OB-GYN told her she’d need surgery to remove the fallopian tube, which had ruptured. Thurman, still heavily bleeding, balked. Losing the tube would jeopardize her fertility.

But her doctor told her she risked death if she waited any longer.

“She came in and she’s like, you’re either going to have to have a blood transfusion, or you’re going to have to have surgery or you’re going to bleed out,” Thurman said, through tears. “That’s when I just kind of was like, “oh my God, I’m, I’m dying.”

Ascension Seton Williamson declined to comment on Thurman’s case, but said in a statement the hospital “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”

In Florida, a 15-week pregnant woman leaked amniotic fluid for an hour in Broward Health Coral Springs’ emergency wait room, according to federal documents. An ultrasound revealed the patient had no amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus, a dangerous situation that can cause serious infection.

The woman miscarried in a public bathroom that day, after the emergency room doctor listed her condition as “improved” and discharged her, without consulting the hospital’s OB-GYN.

Emergency crews rushed her to another hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator and discharged after six days.

Abortions after 15 weeks were banned in Florida at the time. Broward Health Coral Springs’ obstetrics medical director told an investigator that inducing labor for anyone who presents with pre-viable premature rupture of membranes is “the standard of care, has been a while, regardless of heartbeat, due to the risk to the mother.”

The hospital declined to comment or share its policies with the AP.

In another Florida case, a doctor admitted state law had complicated emergency pregnancy care.

“Because of the new laws … staff cannot intervene unless there is a danger to the patient’s health,” a doctor at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told an investigator who was probing the hospital’s failure to offer an abortion to a pregnant woman whose water broke at 15 weeks, well before the fetus could survive.

Troubles extend beyond abortion ban states

Serious violations that jeopardized a mother or her fetus’ health occurred in states with and without abortion bans, the AP’s review found.

In interviews with investigators, two short-staffed hospitals – in Idaho and Washington – admitted to routinely directing pregnant patients to drive to other hospitals.

A pregnant patient at a Bakersfield, California, emergency room was quickly triaged, but staff failed to realize the urgency of her condition, a uterine rupture. The delay, an investigator concluded, may have contributed to the baby’s death.

Doctors at emergency rooms in California, Nebraska, Arkansas and South Carolina failed to check for fetal heartbeats or discharged patients who were in active labor, leaving them to deliver at home or in ambulances, according to the documents.

Nursing and doctor shortages that have plagued hospitals since the onset of COVID-19, trouble staffing ultrasounds around-the-clock, and new abortion laws are making the emergency room a dangerous place for pregnant women, warned Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official.

“It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” she said.

The Twins have to make a couple of pitching moves for the Royals series that starts Monday night. One of them will be calling up prospect Zebby Matthews to make his major league debut.

A major league source said Matthews, the Twins’ second-ranked pitching prospect behind David Festa — already with the club — will be called up Tuesday. Whether that’s to start that night or in Wednesday’s series finale is unclear.

Pablo Lopez will start a 6:40 p.m. game Monday at Target Field. After that, it’s TBA and TBA.

The Twins also have to make room on the active roster for left-hander Steven Okert, who has returned from bereavement leave. The likely candidate is veteran Randy Dobnak, who ate three innings of Sunday’s game and kept the Twins in a 5-3 loss to Cleveland.

Matthews, 24, was an eighth-round pick out of Western Carolina in the 2022 amateur draft. He’s a 6-foot-5, 225-pound right-hander with a fastball that sits between 94 and 97 mph, according to mlb.com’s Statcast.

He finished last season at High-A Cedar Rapids and has pitched this season for Class AA Wichita, where he was 1-2 with a 1.95 earned-run average and 63 strikeouts against just six walks in 55⅓ innings, and Class AAA St. Paul. He has made two starts with the Saints, one rough, one good.

In his first start with the Saints, Matthews gave up five earned runs on nine hits while striking out eight. In the second, last Thursday, he gave up a run on two hits and a walk and fanned five.

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