An Olympics Ratings Avalanche
The first three days of the Peacock's coverage of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics averaged 35.1 million viewers, giving the network, as expected, first place gold in the Nielsen race last week.
NBC averaged 24 million viewers in prime-time over the course of the week, notching eight of the top 10 slots. (CBS, which landed the other two, averaged 11.1 million to finish second to NBC for the week.)
A record-setting 45.6 million people checked out the patriotism and paper puppets in the opening ceremony on Friday. While viewership dipped on Saturday and Sunday, enough fans and curiosity seekers tuned in for home-grown pipeline snowboarders, north-of-the-border prancing skaters and men going downhill very very fast on skis and sleds to push the three-day average 23 percent higher than the same period at the Nagano Winter Olympics in Japan, televised by CBS four years ago.
Although Monday's ratings aren't included in the Nielsen round-up, 66 million viewers tuned in to coverage of the controversial pairs skating and the U.S. men's clean sweep of the halfpipe-snowboard final. NBC is trumpeting the 19.3 rating/27 share as the highest on any network Monday night since ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards scored a 29.1/43 four years ago. It was NBC's best Monday prime-time showing since the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, when Michael Johnson won the 400 meters gold and Carl Lewis his ninth medal, leading NBC to a 28.6/47. (Who knew that the likes of Ross Powers, Danny Kass and J.J. Thomas would ever be mentioned in the same breath as those athletes?)
According to Nielsen Media Research and NBC's own bean counters, an estimated 137 million people have caught some of the Salt Lake festivities over the past four days. The network would also like you to know that of the 84,000 who had punched in their judgment on the NBC Website, 95 percent think the Canadian pairs skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier should have been given the gold.
The average Olympics rating after four days stands at 20.1 with a 32 share. If it holds up the network will be above the rating it guaranteed advertisers--reported to be around 17--and won't have to pay any compensation.
With the rah-rah and emotional drama of the games attracting viewers who don't usually watch sports, NBC's network rivals have virtually conceded February sweeps. For the week ended Sunday, NBC averaged nearly as many viewers as CBS (11.1 million), ABC (8.7 million) and Fox (8.4 million) combined. In the minor leagues, UPN outpointed the WB 4.5 million to 4.1 million. Pax again finished in the Nielsen basement with 1.2 million average viewers.
If the initial success of the Olympics wasn't enough, NBC's Friends also had an exceptional week. The show's Valentine's episode (airing a week early because of the Olympics), attracted 28.6 million viewers--4 million more than its average this season--to place fourth for the week. A Friends rerun airing at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday did nearly as well, drawing 28.1 million viewers in fifth place.
Here are the top 10 shows among total viewers for the week ended February 11, according to Nielsen Media Research:
1. Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies, NBC, 45.6 million viewers
2. Winter Olympics (Sunday), NBC, 30.2 million
3. Winter Olympics (Saturday), NBC, 29.4 million
4. Friends, NBC, 28.6 million
5. Friends (special), NBC, 28.1 million
6. E.R., NBC, 27.4 million
7. Will & Grace, NBC, 25.3 million
8. C.S.I., CBS, 24.6 million
9. Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS, 20.9 million
10.Frasier, NBC, 19 million
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