Without U.S. skating,
Games fervor melts
Nightly ratings drop below Turin four years ago
By Toni Fitzgerald
Feb 25, 2010
The Winter Olympics on NBC are still on pace to be the most-watched non-U.S. Games since 1994, but they're losing a bit of steam in their final week.
Tuesday night's competition, featuring the usually much-anticipated ladies' figure skating short program, managed 21.3 million total viewers opposite Fox's juggernaut "American Idol."
That was the third-lowest Olympic total thus far, though it was up 1 million versus the same night last week.
Still, the Olympics haven't drawn more than 24 million viewers the past three nights, and last night was once again down compared to the same night in Turin, which drew 25.3 million viewers.
The lesson may be that ladies' figure skating is only a huge draw when an American is competing for the crown.
The 2006 Games featured Sasha Cohen going for gold, and the 25.3 million viewers were the most to that point in the Winter Olympics.
Tuesday night, with South Korea, Japan and Canada boasting the top three skaters and the top American finishing only fifth, interest in skating was way down.
That was evident in the lead-up to the Games as well, after Cohen, the 2006 silver medalist, failed in her bid to come out of retirement and make the team.
By last week, figure skating ranked only No. 3 on a Nielsen study of online buzz, or about a third of the buzz for the leading sport, hockey.
Still, this Olympics is pacing well ahead of last in the first 12 days of competition. Vancouver has averaged 25.2 million viewers, which coincidentally happens to be the season average for "Idol."
To this point four years ago, Turin was drawing a mere 21 million.
|
|
|
