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In head to head competition during the 9 PM hour, NBC’s Vancouver Olympics attracted 30.1 million viewers compared to Fox’s American Idol audience of 18.4 Million. In fact, the usually last place place network crowed that 29.4 million people watched NBC last night, which was nearly 12 million more than the first Wednesday of 2006 Winter Games. NBC’s broadcasts broke American Idol’s six-year unbeaten streak. The Olympics also out-rated Idol by 63% (17.0 vs. 10.4) among households and 30% among adults 18-49 (9.0 vs. 6.9) based on data provided today by Nielsen Media Research. Of course, helping the ratings was the greatest single day in Winter Olympics history as Team USA captured 6 medals.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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What is the point of boasting when the coverage is awful and they are only running the events edited for TV. No live broadcasts, no suspense, and we know the results before they air their coverage. The hosts seemed canned and distant from the events and there is no sense of connection to either the race or the audience. NBC is blowing this like everything else they have done this year.
Last night’s woman downhill and men’s half-pipe rocked.
Good for NBC for adding the mic on the guys during the half-pipe since it was fun to listen in after White realized he won the gold again. Loved hearing his coach tell White to do whatever he wanted during his last run. White briefly suggested a straight run down the pike (which would have disappointed), but the coach put him back on track to do a great run including his new trick (the double mac whatever).
Quite a rags to riches story. Good for White and his family.
Dearest NBC,
Bragging that you are number one in the ratings as often as every Leap Year or Olympics just reminds everyone how bad you are the rest of the time.
I do realize the need you feel to do it.
It’s not like you will get the chance again in the near future so you want to do it now.
But, it’s not like you developed the Olympics as an original concept for TV.
CMT could broadcast the Olympics and be number one too.
The Olympics are crushing “Idol”? What a shock! Zucker is a genius! It was so smart of him to have staged the first games in 776 B.C. so millenia later his network would be able to buy a sports program that the whole world wants to see, therefore preventing him from having to be able to develop entertaining content!
So the only thing they managed to hold down without embarassing themselves is the Olympics…except for the part where they overpaid for it just to get it and will lose $200 million on it.
How long until NBC is a cable channel?
I understand NBC’s carping – after all, they need SOMETHING to trumpet. But compare costs: how much is “Idol” to put on the air vs. the Olympics? Perhaps Fox should retort with a dollar-to-ratings ratio…
And to make things even worse, on their own page, they have an Olympic twitter feed for all their athletes. It hurts when they ask, just how badly is NBC gonna butcher the coverage of their event. -_-
Now if NBC can just figure out how to have Olympic and NFL coverage year round they might have something here…
Ha! So much for Ellen savings the show and now demanding 150K for clothing allowances.
Guess who is laughing now…somewhere Paula Abdul is smiling till her jaw hurts
You’re kidding with this, right? Way to go , NBC, you beat out a show that’s been on twice a week for 10+ years…congrats. What’s next? Taking credit for inventing the Olympics? You’re still simply the worst.
Good news for NBC especially in light of the recent Conan O’Brien/ Jay Leno debacle. 18.4 million is low by American Idol standards.
There was plenty of crowing over at Fox when Idol’s numbers stood on Tuesday and, in fact, AI performed well in all demos by a very large margin. That the Olympics were #1 Wednesday IS big news, whether all you Hater-Ade drinkers want to acknowledge it or not.
Not that Idol has much to worry about; this isn’t that start of a trend or anything like that. But NBC does deserve some praise for the rare times when they manage to do the occasional thing correctly.