Olympics ratings
shoot up on U.S. wins
Games average 29.4 million viewers, up 9.1 million
By Toni Fitzgerald
Feb 19, 2010
It was, arguably, the best day ever for Americans at the Winter Olympics. And it brought in NBC's best numbers since Friday's opening ceremonies.
U.S. athletes captured six medals on Wednesday, three of them gold, boosting NBC to an average 29.4 million total viewers during primetime, according to Nielsen.
That was up 9.1 million from the previous night, when the Winter Games finished behind a two-hour "American Idol" on Fox.
Wednesday night, in a widely publicized triumph, NBC finally managed to beat "Idol" for the first time ever while airing the Olympics, becoming the first show to defeat Fox's juggernaut in head-to-head competition in nearly six years, since May 2004.
It took a Herculean effort from the Olympians to do it. The U.S. got golds in the 1000-meter long-track speed skate, the women's downhill and the halfpipe, and three more silver or bronzes, setting a Winter Games record.
It helped that Shani Davis and Shaun White were looking to become repeat winners in the speed skating and halfpipe events; they were already known to U.S. audiences and had been hyped up by NBC going into the evening.
That helped the network to huge gains over the same night in 2006. From 8 to 11:17 p.m., the Olympics drew 11 million more viewers than the Turin Games.
That was NBC's biggest audience since Friday's opening ceremonies drew 32.6 million.
Among households, the network averaged a 16.7 rating, up 48 percent from Turin.
And the strong ratings should have continued last night with American Evan Lysacek becoming the first U.S. man to win a gold medal in figure skating since 1988.
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