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Main >> News Listing >> February 2002 >> Article ID 6037
 Olympics Runs Rings Around Ratings | Type: Internet Article |
| | Olympics Runs Rings Around Ratings | Feb 26, 2002 | by Bridget Byrne
Summary:
Sunday's closing ceremonies attracted about 38.7 million viewers, whose love of country and winter sports (or maybe just love of Christina Aguilera's glittery garter belt or Willie Nelson's braids) made the torch-snuffing the third most-watched night of the 17 days of the Salt Lake City Games. (The opening ceremony averaged 45 million viewers and last Thursday's tensely dramatic women's figure-skating final hooked 43.3 million.)
Read on for the whole article. |
NBC tossed everything into the ring for the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics--and it paid off big time, as the network easily dominated the Nielsen ratings and delivered higher than expected ratings for the Salt Lake City Games.
For the second straight week, the seven top programs were Olympics coverage. And, in an upset, NBC's Olympics-themed Dateline came in eighth. It was the first time the NBC news magazine scored a head-to-head win over CBS' veteran 60 Minutes, which was 12th. Both newsmagazines featured Olympic stories, with NBC's love letter to skating beauties of the past, Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill, proving more popular than CBS' further probe into the bidding scandal behind the Salt Lake City Games (which, NBC crowed in a press release, the Peacock had reported in "great detail prior to the opening ceremony of Sydney in September 2000.")
CBS's family comedy Everybody Loves Raymond was ninth. The 10th slot belonged to Fox's The Simpsons.
For the week ended Sunday, the Peacock averaged 32.8 million viewers, almost four times more than its nearest rival, again CBS, which pulled in just 8.6 million. Fox attracted 7.8 million and ABC just 7 million. The minor networks were iced out as usual: UPN was fifth with 4.3 million viewers, the WB had 3 million and PAX had 1.4 million.
Sunday's closing ceremonies attracted about 38.7 million viewers, whose love of country and winter sports (or maybe just love of Christina Aguilera's glittery garter belt or Willie Nelson's braids) made the torch-snuffing the third most-watched night of the 17 days of the Salt Lake City Games. (The opening ceremony averaged 45 million viewers and last Thursday's tensely dramatic women's figure-skating final hooked 43.3 million.)
The closing night musical mélange topped the 35.7 million average for the closing night at Lillehammer in 1994 and double the 18.4 million for the last night in Nagano in 1998, both of which were televised by CBS. It was also more than the 34.1 million NBC registered for the closing of the Atlanta summer games in 1996.
The Sunday afternoon U.S.-Canada hockey final drew 38 million viewers--the highest since the U.S. beat Finland for the gold medal in Lake Placid in 1980 and higher than any NHL telecast in history.
With rival networks barely bothering to program the stunts and specials which usually dominate any sweeps period, the Olympics drew together the fractured television audience to achieve nightly prime-time numbers that surprised even NBC.
"I said at the outset that the Salt Lake City Winter Games in primetime would be the equivalent of seven Super Bowls. As it actually turns out, it's more like eight Super Bowls. People are talking about the Olympics now more than perhaps ever before," says Randy Falco, president of the NBC Television Network and chief operating officer of the networks' Olympics division.
The network says a whopping 187 million watched some of the 375.5 hours of coverage (which includes some MSNBC and CNBC cable broadcasts). The network had guaranteed advertisers a 16.9 household rating. It wound up with a 19.2 (the highest rating for a Winter Olympics since Lake Placid). Overall, NBC's ratings were a record 149 percent over regular network programming.
Money is now rolling in. The Hollywood Reporter estimates NBC will net about $75 million from coverage of the games--$20 million more than expected.
In terms of viewership, the Salt Lake Games fell short of the 204 million total audience for CBS' coverage of the Lillehammer Games (or as an NBC press release derisively dubs them, the "tabloid" Olympics) in 1994, which featured the infamous Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan showdown.
Here are the top 10 shows among total viewers for the week of February 18-24 as compiled by Nielsen Media Research.
1. Winter Olympics (Thursday), NBC, 43.3 million
2. Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony (Sunday), NBC 38.7 million
3. Winter Olympics (Tuesday), NBC , 36.7 million
4. Winter Olympics (Wednesday), NBC, 32 million
5. Winter Olympics (Friday), NBC, 29.2 million
6. Winter Olympics (Saturday), NBC, 27 million
7. Winter Olympics (Monday), NBC, 26.5 million
8. Dateline (Sunday), NBC, 19.2 million
9. Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS, 14.4 million
10. Simpsons, Fox, 13.2 million |
 Source: E! Online | |
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