The Beijing Olympics have taken the silver for the second-most-watched Games in history, jumping past former No. 2 Lillehammer on Wednesday night. Can they surpass the 1996 Atlanta Games for No. 1?

It’s looking more and more like the answer will be yes.

Through 13 days, the Summer Games on NBC have drawn 206 million cumulative viewers, or viewers who have tuned in to at least six minutes of coverage.

That’s pacing 5 million ahead of Atlanta at the same point 12 years ago. Atlanta drew 209 million, though certainly the television universe was a bit smaller then and the Games didn’t have the extensive cable presence they do now.

Beijing seems on pace to break the record by a couple million. Wednesday it eased past the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games by 2 million, a day after surpassing the 17-day total for Athens 2004.

NBC Universal says that more than 85 percent of U.S. households have tuned in to some portion of the Games across its broadcast and cable networks.

Through 13 days, NBC is averaging 29.0 million total viewers in primetime, 12 percent better than Athens’ 26 million. In households, it’s averaging a 16.9 rating and 29 share, the best non-U.S. Olympics since Barcelona 1992. That’s up 7 percent from a 15.8/27 in 2004.

Wednesday night NBC’s week-to-week declines continued, though the network is still seeing slight viewership gains against the comparable night in Athens. NBC averaged 24.8 million viewers in primetime, up 2 percent over Athens’ 24.3 million.

NBC earned a 15.2/26 in households, down 1 percent from a 15.3/26 in Athens. Both measures were down from the previous week, when NBC averaged 27.7 million viewers and a 16.7/28.

That’s when swimming and gymnastics were still going on, two of the Games’ most popular sports. The Games traditionally see a double-digit ratings decline during the second week of competition, because the remaining events aren’t quite as popular.

Of course the much-talked-about woes of the U.S. track and field team may not be helping matters. Day after day news has come out of Beijing of runners, vaulters, jumpers and throwers not living up to expectations.

These results come out hours before NBC’s taped primetime broadcasts, unlike last week, when many of the top events were live. Thus NBC may be getting smaller tune-ins because viewers know in advance that, for example, 400-meter dash favorite Sanya Richards or defending 200 champ Shawn Crawford lost.

Meanwhile, NBCOlympics.com continues to see big traffic. The site has garnered 1.04 billion page views, roughly double the number for the 2004 Summer and 2006 Winter Games combined.

Its 43.9 million unique users is 74 percent higher than the combined users for those Games as well.