Fewer Viewers Light Up Olympic Torch for NBC (tiny violin Alert)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC's broadcast of the 2004 Olympics has gotten off to as bumpy a start as the U.S. Olympic team itself, with prime-time ratings for the first three days of the Summer Games down slightly from four years ago, according to figures released on Monday.

NBC's prime-time Olympics coverage still towered over the usual summer sitcoms, reality shows and reruns offered on rival U.S. networks during the first three days of the Athens Games, posting a hefty household rating of 14.1 and a full quarter share of all viewers watching TV on those evenings.

But compared with the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia -- the lowest-rated Olympics in more than 30 years -- prime-time ratings for Friday through Sunday in Athens were off 3 percent, though Sunday evening alone posted a year-to-year gain, Nielsen Media Research reported.

A rating point is equal to 1 percent of the 108.4 million U.S. households with TV sets.

NBC's telecast of the opening ceremonies -- a showpiece event that sets the tone of Olympics coverage and typically attracts higher ratings than the first two weekend days of competition -- drew an average audience of 25 million viewers, down from 27.3 million for the Sydney Games (news - web sites), the network said, citing Nielsen data.

But NBC cheered its own performance, focusing on a broader gauge of viewership -- the total number of individuals who tuned in to some portion of the broadcast, regardless of when.

By that measure, about 56 million viewers saw at least some of the nearly four-hour spectacle of Greek gods, chiseled athletes and spectacular fireworks that kicked off the Summer Games in the ancient capital.

"With the average American television household having 25 more channels to choose from than it did four years ago, it feels great to be right on the viewership levels of Sydney's Opening Ceremony," Dick Ebersol, Chairman, NBC Universal Sports and Olympics, said in a statement.

Among all U.S. households with TV sets, NBC's ratings for Friday and Saturday night were down from the same nights four years ago, each by about 11 percent. Sunday was a better day for the network, though, as prime-time ratings rose nearly 6 percent over 2000.

The Olympics got off to a somewhat disappointing start for the United States, with a stunning loss by the basketball "Dream Team" to Puerto Rico and American athletes clinching fewer gold medals overall than at the same point four years ago.

Attendance in Athens has been disappointing, too, as organizers fell short of promises to sell about 65 percent of a total 5.2 million tickets to events by the games' opening, though stands at some events were still barely half full.

While ratings were flat to lower, U.S. TV critics were generally pleased with Friday's opening event, including those jaundiced by the Olympics' increasing commercialism.

"Even with all the bluster and bloat -- beginning with the strains of the 'Jurassic Park' theme that opened NBC's coverage -- the Games themselves remain hard to screw up, fueled by the noble ideal of seeing the world compete in sporting arenas, not on battlefields," Daily Variety's Brian Lowry wrote on Monday.

"After some second-guessing about their preparedness, the Greeks clearly rallied to the task before them, delivering an Opening Ceremony that met the high standard for these spectacles," Lowry said.

But others could not resist digging at the games' sponsored nature -- especially with NBC saying Friday it had reached a goal of $1 billion in advertising commitments.

"Welcome to Greece. Home of Eros, the God of Love; Zeus, the God of the Heavens; Visa, the God of Debt; and Nike, the God of Shoes We Want," wrote the Los Angeles Times' Paul Brownfield, in opening his review.

NBC has said it expects the 2004 games to be as profitable as Sydney, a figure sources have pegged at around $50 million.

NBC, and its sister networks carrying Olympic coverage, are units of NBC Universal, part of General Electric Co.

LOL, I'm afraid you could make a full time job of correcting my spelling. Thanks for bringing this one to my attention, but sadly, there'll be more.

I'm sure some of my posts are downright painful. I try to spell-check on the long ones.

Take care.

61 posted on 08/17/2004 12:59:31 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (US socialist liberalism would be dead without the help of politicians who claim to be conservatives)

So, someone's not going to watch the remaining 15 days of the Olympics, because she was on day one...

Oh, I was being a bit harsh.
But I guess the brass at NBC thought that they'd improve things by not trying
a repeat of their sad experiement with Jim McKay at the Salt Lake Winter Olympics.
They forgot to give the head chipmunk the gong.

Actually I'm sympathetic to NBC's struggle with the Olympics. It's much harder to
promote in an age of endless alternatives in cable/dish TV etc.
Not to mention that the Olympics really had a lot of the wind go out of the sails
with the fall of the Soviet Bloc. It's just not the good v. evil life-and-death
struggle against chemically-enhanced East German females that it used to be.

You're right, a lot of the political drama has left the games.

I don't see too many Mohammedan athletes.

Maybe they should have the Jihad Games, where Muslims compete to see who can put on their suicide belt the fastest, how many bombs they can plant in a pre-school in a set period of time, how loud they can chant "Death to America, Death to Jews"...

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