Viewers get up close and personal with other programming

When the Winter Olympics made their return to prime time last week, American television viewers were captivated by the personal drama, the layered story lines and the unique characters they’d quickly come to embrace.

Problem was, they weren’t watching the Olympics.

NBC’s ratings were clearly affected by viewership of the popular prime-time dramas and reality shows. Through the first five days of the Olympics, NBC’s 12.7 prime-time ratings average was down 35.8 percent from the 2002 home-soil games in Salt Lake City, and 23.4 percent off CBS’s 1998 ratings from Nagano, Japan, according to Nielsen Media Research.

In Salt Lake, NBC did not go head-to-head with any premier episodes of a top-10 show and won every night of prime time. That streak ended with a thud this time around. Last Tuesday, Fox’s lineup beat NBC by every key measure, outperforming the network by 71 percent among adults 18-49, 124 percent among adults 18-34 and 25 percent in total viewers, according to Fox’s analysis of Nielsen Media Research Fast National ratings.

More than 16 million Americans did view the Olympics that night, but about 27 million were watching “American Idol.”

On the preceding Sunday, NBC averaged a 13.5 household rating for its Olympic coverage, dead even with ABC for the night and trailing its blockbuster dramas “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” which posted a 14.6 and 15.5 Fast National rating, respectively. ABC Entertainment executive vice president Jeff Bader said ABC’s programming decisions were based in part on the fact that Olympic competition was not live on NBC.

“No matter how hard NBC might try to not let results get out, you can’t avoid it,” he said. “It just doesn’t have the same electricity as when it’s live.”He said that for Salt Lake, 48 percent of all competitive broadcast network programming was repeats. This year, that number is down to 40 percent, as 60 percent is first-run.

One reason the competition stands out this year is that in 2002, NBC had the majority of top 10 prime-time shows, which were of course pre-empted by the Olympics. Now, NBC does not have any of the top 10 and Fox and ABC have powerhouses in their lineups.

“Our thought going into this is we have some of the most popular shows on television,” Bader said. “The best thing we can do against strong competition is have those shows on.”

NBC has still been attracting its highest network ratings since the Athens Games in 2004. But what the totals indicate is that the Olympic spike is not based on pulling viewers from other broadcast networks, but more by cutting into cable viewing or by attracting people who otherwise would not be watching television.

For the other networks, it’s almost as if the Olympics isn’t happening. During the week of Feb. 6-12, which included three nights of Olympic telecasts, CBS, ABC and Fox combined for a 35 percent share of the total television viewing audience — actually one point higher than the same week a year ago.

Executives at competing networks say they don’t even think of what they’re doing as “counterprogramming.”

“We don’t see it as being fearless or bold,” said Preston Beckman, executive vice president for strategic program planning at Fox Broadcasting Co. “We see it that the audience for those shows are so loyal we felt the Olympics would not significantly erode their ratings during these two weeks. And so far that appears to be the case.” “American Idol” slipped from previous weeks but still beat the Olympics.

ESPN also turns a blind eye to the Winter Olympics, and sees little ratings impact, network officials said.

“For the Winter Olympics we don’t really do anything different,” said Scott Guglielmino, vice president of programming and acquisitions at ESPN. “When you look at our college basketball, we’re kind of locked in.”

NBC executives were not available for comment.

Going head-to-head Some TV strongholds fared better with first-run shows going up against the Winter Games.

Note: Fast National ratings for “Grey’s Anatomy” and “American Idol” Sources: Nielsen Media Research, NBC