Olympics score,
even for taped events
NBC's Monday coverage averages 25.2 million viewers
By Toni Fitzgerald
Feb 17, 2010
One of the worries of these Olympic Games has been whether people will still tune in for taped coverage when the results of the events are widely available on Twitter, Facebook and just about any other web site hours before they air on NBC.
Thus far, that does not seem to be a problem. The results of Monday's marquee event, men's downhill skiing, were available more than seven hours before NBC's primetime coverage began, but the network still drew strong ratings.
Monday night's coverage averaged 25.2 million total viewers, according to Nielsen, up 19 percent from the 21.1 million who watched the first Monday night of the Turin Games four years ago.
It was the least-watched night of competition yet for the Games, 1 million fewer than Saturday night, the previous least-watched night.
But that's still a hefty crowd for NBC, which more than doubled the night's No. 2 show, ABC's "The Bachelor" with 11.5 million viewers.
The strong numbers came despite the fact that many already knew about American skier Bode Miller's bronze medal. NBC posted news of the medal on its Olympic Twitter feed at 12:41 p.m. Monday afternoon, and many sites had their stories up by 1 or 2 p.m.
Still, viewers probably wanted to see for themselves how Miller, the biggest disappointment of the '06 Games, pulled it off.
The 32-year-old made headlines heading into those Olympics after telling a "60 Minutes" interviewer that he had skied while drunk. He failed to win a single medal as NBC drew disappointing numbers for those Games.
In fact, that probably sums up the success of these Games so far: Americans will tune in to watch U.S. athletes win medals when they know the outcome in advance. They won't tune in to watch them lose, and so far the U.S. is excelling.
The U.S. led all countries with eight medals heading into yesterday's competition.
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