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NBC reverses slumps, sees Olympics viewers rise
2004-08-20
Carly Patterson of the United States holds up her flowers after winning the gold during the women's gymnastics individual all-around final at the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 19, 2004. |
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LOS ANGELES - One week into its coverage of the Athens Olympics, television network NBC has mounted a comeback in viewership worthy of U.S. gold-medal gymnasts, reversing an early slump to post ratings well ahead of four years ago.NBC's prime-time coverage of the Olympics has drawn a 16.2 rating, on average, for the first seven nights of broadcasting, up 10 percent from 2000's Summer Games from Sydney, Australia, according to figures issued on Friday by Nielsen Media Research. Each ratings point represents 1 percent of the 108.4 million U.S. homes with TV sets, meaning viewers in about 17.6 million homes nightly tuned in during prime-time hours. Through the first three nights, NBC's audience was down 3 percent from Sydney, which was the lowest-rated Olympics in more than 30 years. That performance left some fearing viewership would be down overall for the 17-day event. But as the performance of American athletes at the Athens Games began to improve, so did NBC's numbers. The network now regularly draws more than one-quarter of all prime-time viewers to its coverage, handily beating the other networks combined. Thursday night's ratings, NBC said, were higher than all 17 nights from Sydney in 2000 and higher than all but three nights from Barcelona in 1992 and Seoul in 1988. Anchoring the Thursday night telecast was the popular women's gymnastics all-around event in which U.S. tumbler Carly Patterson came back from a shaky start to take the gold medal. Her showing followed a similar effort Wednesday by the United States' Paul Hamm, who fell in the vault event before rebounding for gold. NBC Universal, which houses NBC and is the entertainment wing of General Electric Co., also is taking advantage of its wide array of TV outlets to air competition not only on NBC but on cable channels CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo and USA, as well as Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo. Thus far, NBC said, average viewership in the relevant time periods is up 44 percent on MSNBC and 24 percent on CNBC, adding to the "halo effect" of the Olympics across the sister networks. NBC did not provide such figures for USA or Bravo. The impact also has extended to NBC Universal's syndicated entertainment show, "Access Hollywood," which beat perennial powerhouse "Entertainment Tonight" in the ratings this week for the first time in its eight-year history. Reuters/VNU
Three more medals for U.S. women gymnasts (2004-08-22)Paul Hamm upstaged in Olympics Gymnastics (2004-08-22)NBC reverses slumps, sees Olympics viewers rise (2004-08-20)Hamm Wins All-Around With Amazing Comeback (2004-08-19)4 (11285)
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