Monday's Olympics
slip on ice dancing
It's the first night when viewership dips below Turin
By Diego Vasquez
Feb 24, 2010
Monday marked the second-least-watched night of the Vancouver Winter Games, but as has come to be routine, NBC still spanked the competition.
Monday's coverage averaged 20.9 million total viewers in primetime, marking the first time this Olympics that viewership has fallen below the same night in Turin four years ago.
NBC averaged 22.5 million on the equivalent night in 2006, though as the network points out, during the '06 Games it aired the men's giant slalom race on the second Monday night. This year the men's giant slalom aired on the second Tuesday, with ice dancing taking up the bulk of Monday night's coverage.
The least-watched night of these games came last Tuesday, against "American Idol," when NBC averaged 20.3 million viewers.
The Olympics were still by far the most-watched program on Monday night, almost doubling ABC's "The Bachelor," which averaged 11.2 million viewers.
Monday's featured competition was ice dancing, and while the U.S. did have a silver medal couple, the sport has never been as popular as the more athletic figure skating.
If viewership dipped last night, when the women's figure skating competition began, that would be more worrisome for NBC, which has come under fire by bloggers, sports writers and sports talk radio hosts for its coverage.
They have criticized the extensive use of tape delays and odd scheduling of these Games, like showing Sunday's Canada-U.S. men's hockey game on cable instead of broadcast.
Despite that first Olympics-to-Olympics decline, NBC's Vancouver coverage remains well ahead of Turin, averaging 25.5 million total viewers through the first 11 nights, up 24 percent over the 20.6 million who watched four years ago.
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