With no Olympic Games airing this summer, national TV ad spending was down 27% in August, according to the latest figures from Standard Media Index.

Spending on broadcast was down 54% in the month. Of the TV ad spending on the Olympics last year, 92% went to broadcast with only 8% going to cable. Still, cable ad spending was down 1% for the month, according to SMI.

On cable, ESPN was up 27% from a year ago, with the sports leader airing NFL preseason games and more of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships taking place in August. ESPN also got higher rates for Major League Baseball games.

Other cable networks showing gains included Discovery Channel, jumping 16%; Food Network, taking a 10% bigger bite; TBS, up 5%; and HGTV, edging up 1.5%.

SMI said ad revenue at the cable news networks continued to grow, but at less intense rate. Fox News Channel, MSNBC and CNN as a group were up 6%, but for the first time this year, Fox News was down, taking in 2.5% less than a year ago. MSNBC was up a whopping 26% and CNN was up 8%.CNN was up 8% and MSNBC.

So far this year, the cable news networks are up 19%, with MSNBC up 41%, CNN up 18% and Fox News up 15%. SMI noted that MSNBC started the year with the lowest average commercial prices, creating the opportunity for a steeper percentage gain.

Related > TV News Titans: The 10 Names to Know

Among the Big 3 broadcasters, NBC, which aired the Rio games a year ago, was down 82% in August ad revenue. With the NFL season starting and no Olympic competition, CBS was up 17% and Fox was up 14%. ABC was down 1%.

Among the Spanish-language broadcast networks, Univision was up 3%, while Telemundo, which aired the Olympics in Spanish, was down 7%.

Strong performers in the month included ABC’s The Bachelorette. The price for spots on the reality show was up 50% to $131,000 from a year ago and the series brought in nearly 80% more revenue. The summer run of Saturday Night Live fetched $124,000 per spot.

The total ad market was down 7% in August compared with a year ago when the Olympics were going on. So far in 2017, ad spending is up 2.4%, compared with the first eight months of 2016.

Despite the lack of the games, digital was up 12%.

“The Olympics in August 2016 make meaningful year-on-year comparisons tricky, but our data did show some insights that are worth focusing on," said James Fennessy, CEO of Standard Media Index. "The overall market is up 2.4% on a year-to-date basis, with only a 4% year-to-date loss on TV, which shows that a lot of Olympics dollars had been redirected into the Games from existing budgets.

“And, while the digital market has started to recover from the brand safety concerns earlier this year, there is no doubt that growth has been impacted and publishers like YouTube are looking at more modest growth in the 10% region for the current quarter," Fennessy added.

ESPN on Monday (Jan. 9) will air live the College Football Playoff National Championship game between the Clemson Tigers and Alabama Crimson Tide (pictured) amid questions regarding the continued value of live sports programming on linear TV.

UPDATE, Jan. 10, 2017: ESPN Scores 24.3 Million Viewers for Clemson-Alabama Game

The ratings gravy train that sports networks and the TV industry in general have enjoyed over the years may soon come to an end, MoffettNathanson senior research analyst Michael Nathanson warned in a recent report. Given the ratings falloff for 2016 regular season National Football League games, as well as silver-medal level ratings for the Summer Olympics — and the potential of digital companies such as Facebook and Twitter vying for sports properties and driving up rights fees — TV sports is heading into its future with two strikes already against it, Nathanson argued.

Related: Units of NBC Sports Digital, Turner Expand OTT Sports Deal

In addition, a recent Thuuz Sports survey reported that 84.3% of pay TV subs with DVRs used them to record sports. The results cut into the cable-industry narrative that live sports programming is “DVR-proof,” so the sports-heavy traditional cable bundle is invaluable to fans.

The fact is, some “skinny bundle” offerings are drawing subscribers without a robust lineup of national and regional sports networks, including ESPN.

Live TV sports undoubtedly faces some challenges, but it’s still very much game on for the category, at least in terms of its huge appeal and value to viewers and distributors. When the ratings come out for ESPN’s Clemson-Alabama telecast, it will most likely secure the top spot as the most watched show on cable for the year, beating out Nielsen live-plus-7 ratings for the more than 400 scripted series that will air on cable in 2017. Last year’s CFP National Championship game garnered a cable-best 25 million viewers, and expectations are that this year’s rematch will match or surpass that number.

ESPN’s combined 36.6 million viewers for its two CFP semifinal telecasts on New Year’s Eve topped the disappointing 34.1 million viewers the network generated a year prior for the games.

The year is just getting started, but with live telecasts of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, National Basketball Association games, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League playoff contests, soccer, Ultimate Fighting Championship and boxing events and yes — Monday and Thursday night National Football League games — on tap for 2017, it’s not too early to predict that live sports programming will continue to score big audiences and drive valuable appeal for distributor packages offering such programming.

Despite lower TV ratings, NBC Olympics said digital consumption of content tied to the Summer Games in Rio was lofty, particularly among millennials.

In addition to the heavy coverage on TV, nearly 50 million viewers streamed 3.4 billion minutes of NBC’s Rio coverage on the Web, mobile device and connected devices, with more than half of those viewers under the age of 35. NBC said 2.71 billion live minutes of Rio coverage was streamed, noting that the total was more than 1.2 billion minutes more than the live stream totals for all previous Olympics combined.  

RELATED: Olympic Games Delivered 18.7B TV Ad Impressions

During the games, NBCU’s 11 linear networks presented more than 2,000 hours, and 4,500 hours of coverage streamed at NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app, which is being transitioned post-Rio to a new NBC Sports Scores app that offers personalized sports info and news from more than 25 leagues.

Additionally, more than two-third of the viewers of NBC Olympics’s highlights on platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Google/YouTube were under 35, which lead to “millions of referrals to NBC’s video coverage across all screens,” the programmer said.

RELATED: Despite Ratings Drop, Olympics Gold for NBCU

As for NBC’s primetime Olympics coverage, 382% as many adults 18-34 watched in that period (a rating of 5.3) than watched on the four broadcast networks (1.1 average rating), it added.

As for social platforms, NBC Olympics said 160 million users were reached with Rio content via Facebook, with nearly 70 million in the 18-34 age-range, while 131 million people had 916 million “interactions” via Instagram linked to the games.

About 33 million people on Snapchat consumed NBC-partnered coverage in the U.S. with most under age 35, and more than 1 billion minutes of Olympics content was watched on YouTube, with 70% of those views by people under 35, per “early estimates.”

Related: NBC Sports Group Digtial Media GM Rich Cordella touts NBC unprecidented digital coverage (VIDEO)

“‘Television’ is no longer just a piece of hardware propped up on a table or hanging on a wall. Rather, ‘television’ is now a video stream -- and in the case of the Olympics, a world-class NBC-produced video stream -- delivered to any screen capable of rendering it,” Gary Zenkel, president, NBC Olympics, said in a statement. “America’s Millennial audience is watching television across multiple screens, supplemented and fueled by their social engagement, which in the case of Rio 2016, reached new heights across multiple platforms.”

“Our research shows and the audience consumption proves that Millennials were highly interested, enthusiastic and engaged in the Rio Olympics,” added Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Sports Group. 

NBC Olympics said it will offer a temporary pass to consumers as NBCUniversal and its stable of networks prepare to deliver 4,500 hours of streaming coverage at NBCOlympics.com and via the NBC Sports app during the Summer Olympics from Rio.

Though full access to the TV Everywhere site and app will require MVPD credentials, NBC Olympics will provide a temporary pass that will offer 30 minutes of coverage prior to authentication on the first visit, and five minutes each subsequent day.

NBC Olympics noted that, for the first time, it will stream coverage of all nine NBCU Olympic networks (broadcast nets NBC and Telemundo; and cable channels Bravo, CNBC, Golf Channel, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network, NBC Universo, and USA Network). If a competition event is not televised by one of those networks, coverage from it will be streamed online through NBC Olympics’ utilization of the feeds provided by the host broadcaster, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS).

Connected TVs are also being added to the streaming mix, as NBC Olympics will support authenticated access on Amazon Fire TV devices, the Apple TV, Chromecast adapter, Roku platform and Win10.  All OBS streams will also provide video overlays that provide synchronized data for streaming on desktops, mobile devices and tablets.

NBC Olympics will produce two digital-only programs -- Gold Zone with hosts  Andrew Siciliano and Tanith White; and Daily Dismount, with White, Jonathan Horton and Courtney Kupets) – and a social-focused, short-form video series called Ever Wonder, with hosts Julie Donaldson and Jenna Corrado.

NBC Olympics noted that Streaming will bepowered by Playmaker Media, the live and on-demand streaming service recently launched by NBC Sports Digital, in partnership with Adobe, Akamai, Microsoft, iStreamPlanet, and Comcast Wholesale.

NBC Olympics is also providing some next-day coverage of the games in 4K, and will also mix in 85 hours of virtual reality coverage from the event.  

Dish Network and Comcast will be joining AT&T in offering access to NBCUniversal’s delayed 4K coverage of the Summer Olympics in Rio, albeit in different ways.

Comcast said it will make that content available on demand via its OTT-based Xfinity in UHD app for Samsung and LG smart TVs. Comcast is also working on a 4K-capable box for X1, the Xi6, which will also support high dynamic range (HDR). Dish will offer NBCU’s 4K coverage on linear channel linear channel 146 and via its VOD catalog via the Hopper 3 DVR and 4K Joey devices.

Dish will also enable the “sports bar mode” feature on Hopper 3 to view up to four channels of coverage on one screen.

For the games, Dish will also feature a sports hub, under the 2016 Rio Olympics banner, on channel 148 that provides accesstoNBCU’s coverage on NBCSN, Golf Channel, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, Telemundo, NBC Universo and two linear sport-specific specialty channels.

Dish will also integrate the NBC Olympics app, which include real-time medal counts and the ability to tune to events or set up recordings,  on its family of Hopper set-tops and 4K Joey, Wireless Joey, Joey and Super Joey devices.

Sling TV, Dish’s OTT-TV service, will also carry a portion of NBCU’s coverage of the games via the recently launched Sling Blue service – Bravo and NBC (in select markets), NBC Sports Network and USA. Those who take the Sports Extra pack also have access to Rio coverage on the Golf Channel. Sling Blue’s “Best of Spanish TV” customers can watch Spanish coverage on NBC Universo.

MSNBC and CNBC are typically offered on Sling Blue with the World News Extra add-on, but, Sling Blue will provide a free preview of those nets starting August 1 through the last Olympics event featured on those channels.

AT&T said it will offer a mix of enhancements and special features for NBCU’s coverage, including select 4K programming (for DirecTV subs) and a range of interactive “Mix” channels.

Those Mix channels, offered to DirecTV and U-verse customers, will feature event results, medal counts, and multiple feeds from networks covering the games.

DirecTV’s eight-screens-in-one mosaic of Olympics coverage from NBC, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network and NBC Universo.

U-verse’s Multiview channel will offer four feeds on one screen from NBCSN, Bravo, USA Network, and the local NBC affiliate.

Those Mix channels will be offered from August 5-21.

On the 4K front, DirecTV subs with 4K-capable TVs that also take the provider’s “Ultimate” package or higher will be able to view NBC’s coverage of the games in the new, pixel-packed format.

NBC Olympics, a unit of NBC Sports Group, announced in May that its 4K coverage, provided on a one-day delay, will include 4K/Ultra HD footage from the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as coverage of several events, including swimming, track and field, basketball, the men’s soccer final, judo, with some “Rio scenic” mixed in.

"Our customers can easily keep track of their favorite events by watching the Mix channel. They'll get real time results, medal counts and NBC video highlights at the touch of a remote button," said Dan York, chief content officer for AT&T, in a statement. "And see one of the world's most spectacular cities through our delivery of 4K Ultra HD. It will give DIRECTV customers a breathtaking visual."

DirecTV and U-verse customers will also have multi-platform access to NBCU’s 6,755 hours of Olympic programming, including streaming coverage at NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

Serving and retired U.S. military members will have free access to NBC Olympics’ 4,500 hours of streaming coverage of the Summer Games in Rio.

Streamign access is being provided at no cost by Comcast NBCUniversal in partnership with the Army & Air Force Exchange Service and U.S. cable, satellite and telco providers. Eligible service members will be able to access NBC Olympics’ digital coverage via PCs or personal devices by visiting NBCOlympics.com or via the NBC Sports app, and choosing the Exchange as their service provider.

They said about 7 million service members, retirees and their families will be eligible during the games. Due to content rights restrictions, an active shopmyexchange.com account will be required to verify eligibility, they said, noting that content rights restrictions will also apply to some OCONUS locations.

"We're excited to partner with Comcast NBCUniversal to deliver the Olympics to service members and their families, wherever they are called to serve,” Tom Shull, Director/CEO of the Exchange, said in a statement.

“Few events unify the world like the Olympic Games, and it is only fitting that we make them accessible for those who chose to serve our country,” added Carol Eggert, Brigadier General (Retired), and Vice President of Military and Veteran Affairs at Comcast. “We think it is extremely important to support our employees who are veterans or members of the National Guard and Reserve and the military community as a whole. We are thankful to the Army & Air Force Exchange Service for working with us to deliver the excitement of the Olympics to the military community, no matter where they are located.”

After Comcast NBCUniversal offered the service, a  team that included the Defense Media Activity, Defense Information Systems Agency, the Exchange and DHI Telecom (an Exchange Internet, mobile and IPTV provider) came together to develop the technical solution required for the free access, they said. 

Altice USA said it has agreed to license the full multiplatform offering of NBC Universal’s coverage of the Summer Olympics next month, representing about 6,755 hours of programming, live and on-demand.

Altice USA is a unit of Dutch telecom company Altice N.V., and purchased Cablevision Systems in June. Coupled with its December purchase of Suddenlink Communications, Altice USA has about 4.6 million customers in 20 states.

NBC Universal has committed to offering an unprecedented package of programming for the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero (Aug. 5-21), including coverage on its NBC broadcast channel, and cable networks NBC Sports Network, Golf Channel, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, Telemundo, NBC Universo, and two linear sport-specific specialty channels. Subscribers also can access Olympic programming online at NBCOlympics.com and through the NBC Sports app.

Comcast has consistently touted the Rio Summer Olympics -- the first in the Eastern Time Zone since the 1996 Games in Atlanta -- as a showcase for its X1 platform and was a big part of the company's presentation at this year's INTX Show in Boston.  

“Altice USA is committed to providing our customers with high-quality and innovative products, service, and compelling content. The 2016 Rio Summer Olympics will be the biggest Games ever in one of the most spectacular cities, and we are excited to deliver to our Optimum and Suddenlink TV customers NBCUniversal’s unparalleled multiplatform coverage of this historic event,” said Altice USA EVP and chief content officer Michael Schreiber in a statement.

Bucking a trend amplified by a small but growing cord-cutting trend and the popularity of over-the-top video options, Comcast just came off a first quarter in which the MSO added 53,000 subscribers, its best first-quarter video result in nine years.

While a portion of the credit goes to X1, Comcast’s Internet protocol-capable next-generation video offering, those results are due to a confluence of efforts and initiatives that span not just the core product but also areas such as improved customer care, according to Matt Strauss, Comcast Cable’s executive vice president and general manager, video services.

Multichannel News technology editor and Next TV editor Jeff Baumgartner recently caught up with Strauss to discuss Comcast’s new video products and strategies involving X1, TV Everywhere, its new IP-delivered “Stream” product, and future 4K plans.

Editor's Note: An expanded version of this interview will appear in Multichannel News’s show dailies at this week’s INTX show in Boston.

MCN:As you look at the second half of the year, what are your top priorities?

Matt Strauss: We’re really focused first and foremost on continuing to execute against the deployment of X1. We’re seeing a lot of very positive benefits from X1, both on the churn and on the increased consumption side. We’re now at about 35% penetrated, and it’s even higher if you just look at triple-play subs — about 50% of our triple-play subscribers now have X1.

What goes hand in hand with that is that we also want to finish out the deployment of our cloud infrastructure. We’ve been deploying cloud across our footprint — both cloud streaming and cloud DVR — and we are very close to getting 100% deployment. We want to finish that up by the middle to end of this year.

Finally, we want to continue the penetration and usage of our products and services. We’ve got a very ambitious deployment for our new consolidated Xfinity app. With the upcoming Olympics [in Rio] we want to use that as an opportunity to shine a light on this new application, which we think is a tremendous value to our customers.

Related:INTX 2016: Comcast's Roberts Says No Plans to Take Pay TV Over-the-Top

MCN:With respect to the pay TV momentum, how much credit does X1 get, even as you continue to improve other areas like customer care and customer experience?

MS: It certainly is contributing. When you look at X1, we’re seeing improvements in churn. X1 customers are also consuming more video. They also have a higher attachment rate to DVRs and typically they take additional outlets in their home. There’s no doubt that X1 is contributing, but I don’t know if there’s any one silver bullet.

When it comes to growing the video business, it’s really a combination of several factors and investments that we’ve been making over the past few years, in how we’ve been improving our infrastructure, moving more to IP.

MCN:What kind of usage patterns are you seeing with the Xfinity TV app? Is the big challenge getting the message out to customers so they understand the app’s full capability?

MS: I’d almost characterize it as we’re in a moment in time because we have the Xfinity TV in-home app and we have our Xfinity TV Go app. We are in the process of consolidating those into just one app, which will be the Xfinity TV app. This unification … will provide this unprecedented access to content both in the home and out of the home. And I think those lines are going to continue to get more and more blurred.

When you look at the usage of our app in general, we have about 42% penetration of our mobile app among our double-play customers on a monthly basis. On a quarterly basis, it’s almost 60% who are using one of our apps, and that’s up about 16% year-over-year.

Related:CEO Roberts: Comcast, X1 Ready for Olympics

MCN:What’s next for Comcast with respect to 4K? You’ve got the app for Samsung TVs but we’ve seen some recent reports that you’ll really be focusing more on a strategy that puts an emphasis on High Dynamic Range (HDR)?

MS: While there’s hyper-attention on 4K, when we look at the total video experience, we think 4K is part of the offering. But HDR, which is not necessarily getting the same amount of attention, is in many ways more immersive and, we think, impactful.

Instead of deploying maybe a half-baked solution, which we’re starting to see a little bit of in the market, we thought it was more prudent to deliver the complete experience … and that’s what’s being developed with our Xi6 box, which we’ll be testing this year, but it’s going to really be deployed next year.

MCN:The video market continues to be abuzz about skinny TV bundles. Comcast has been going after that segment with the Stream TV product in some select markets. What have you learned so far, and what’s next on the rollout plan?

MS: In many ways X1, we think, is satisfying the demand for how many of us watch television. The average person watches about 130 hours of video every month.

But there are changes in how other segments are consuming video. When we look at skinny bundles, we believe that they are in some ways a manifestation of the economy as anything else. It’s rare that you hear someone say that they want fewer choices. What’s more likely is that you might hear someone say they want to pay less.

We have been experimenting with skinny bundles and experimenting with ensuring we’re getting the right product to the right customer at the right time in their life, whether that’s Internet Plus or the Xfinity On Campus product, or Stream.

While Stream is, at the moment, comprised of a skinny bundle, the strategies behind Stream are much more around how we’re going to transform the overall end-to-end customer experience, and Stream is just one example of how we are expanding into that terrain.

Telemundo’s weekday morning news and entertainment program is called Un Nuevo Día. With the 2016 Summer Olympics set to air for the first time on the NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises suite of Spanish-language networks, it is indeed “a new day” for Telemundo, the No. 2 U.S. Spanish-language network.

The Rio de Janiero games could very well make Telemundo the No. 1 Spanish-language network in the U.S., giving it multiple weekly ratings wins among viewers 6-plus over top rival Univision for the first time.

To build viewer and advertiser momentum ahead of the Aug. 3-20 event that’s been clouded by reports of political unrest in Brazil and the continued spread of the Zika virus across Latin America’s tropical environs, Telemundo announced its Olympic broadcast plans 102 days ahead of the opening ceremonies.

To say Telemundo is excited about Rio 2016 is a bit of an understatement.

“Telemundo is going to redefine Spanish-language Olympic event coverage in the U.S. with our Río presentation,” Eli Velázquez, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises executive vice president for sports, said. “Not only will we see more competitions than ever before, but we’ll also experience the moving stories of the Hispanic athletes on their quest for Olympic glory.” 

Telemundo’s Olympics coverage actually begins two days before the opening ceremonies from Rio, with a women’s soccer match on Aug. 3. Between Telemundo and its cable sibling NBC Universo, some 200 hours of Spanish-language coverage will be available to U.S. Hispanics throughout the Olympics.

One main programming highlight: coverage of El Tri, the Mexican men’s national soccer squad. Overall coverage will put a focus on Latin American athletes and sports that are “proven favorites among Hispanic audiences” — soccer, boxing, swimming, diving, track and field and basketball.

Telemundo will also broadcast Team USA’s participation in its entirety, including swimmer Michael Phelps’s attempts to add to the record-breaking 18 gold medals he has won in the course of three games.