Olympic fever cools -- and so do the ratings

NBC has more than Bode Miller and Michelle Kwan to be concerned about during the Olympics. There’s also Simon Cowell, Evangeline Lilly and those interns on “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Many factors have conspired to make the Turin Olympics -- through five days of competition -- less of a television event than past games. Probably the most significant is that other networks are putting up a fight with potent weapons.

NBC was knocked on its heels by the first night the Olympics went up against Fox’s “American Idol” Tuesday. Based on preliminary Nielsen Media Research estimates, “Idol” doubled the Olympics audience when they went head to head again Wednesday. Wednesday is also likely to stand as the least-watched night of Winter Olympics competition since at least 1988, according to Nielsen.

Besides “Idol,” viewers who aren’t slalom-inclined have also had new episodes of “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Survivor” and “Dancing With the Stars” to choose from.

“In the past, the Winter Olympics have not had a lot of competition,” said Stacey Lynn Koerner, analyst for the Initiative media agency, “because typically the other networks would lie down and say, ‘Why put our best stuff up against a powerhouse?’ ”

Through the first four days of competition, the average Olympics viewership of 21.6 million people is down 36% from the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, 45% among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers advertisers prefer. The Salt Lake City Games were unusually good for NBC. Domestic Olympics typically fare better in the ratings than foreign ones, there was a surge of patriotism after the 2001 terrorist attacks and NBC was the top-rated network, meaning the competition was less fearsome.

Factor in general viewer erosion because there are simply more channels to choose from, and NBC says the Turin numbers -- distressing as they may seem -- are within the range they promised to advertisers.

NBC notes that its viewership is down 22% since Nagano in 1998. At the same time, the World Series is down 21%, and the Academy Awards down 27% -- proof that big events in general have less pull than they used to, the network said.

There’s been no talk of make-goods, when advertisers are given free commercial time to make up for a smaller-than-expected audience. That has dangers too; Koerner said viewers were turned off by a flood of extra commercials during the final days of the Sydney Games.