Olympics’ new reality

THE Olympic flame is finally extinguished -- and so are NBC’s hopes of getting a powerful ratings kick from the Games.

Turin was the lowest-rated Olympics in at least 20 years, with an overall average of 20 million prime-time viewers over the past 2 1/2 weeks, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research. That was down 37% compared with NBC’s Salt Lake City telecast in 2002 and off 20% from the 1998 Nagano Games on CBS.

Worse, NBC’s coverage was, for the first time, repeatedly hammered in head-to-head competition with rivals’ top shows, including ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” Fox’s “American Idol” and CBS’ “Survivor.”

Since at least the early 1970s, the Games have been considered such an invincible TV phenomenon that competitors usually stayed out of the way by airing repeats. Not this year: Rivals beat NBC on seven of the 17 Olympic nights either among all viewers or among harder-to-reach young adults -- and sometimes in both categories.

NBC’s most-watched Olympic night was this past Thursday, when an average of 25.7 million viewers watched the women’s figure skating finals that culminated with American Sasha Cohen taking a silver medal. But Sunday’s closing ceremonies generated so little viewer interest that they were actually defeated among young adults by a special version of ABC’s perennial clip show, “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

NBC executives, who are struggling in fourth place in prime time this season, tried to be philosophical about the results Monday. NBC has exclusive Olympic rights through 2012. “This is a competitive business, and the other networks are in a sprint toward ... first place,” Randy Falco, president and chief operating officer of NBC Universal Television Group, wrote in an e-mail before leaving Turin. “We didn’t expect any of them to give up -- we wouldn’t.

“The Olympics have never faced such competitive programming, seven of the top 12 shows right now,” he added. “What makes it even more challenging is that all seven of those shows are serialized dramas with very loyal audiences.” On the bright side, Falco said that for all the ratings woes, the Games will still deliver a profit of at least $60 million for NBC, a unit of conglomerate General Electric.

Many analysts and TV veterans agree that fate dealt NBC a tough hand when popular skater Michelle Kwan was forced to pull out of the Olympics due to injuries, and skier Bode Miller’s bid for gold medals fizzled. “If you don’t have any big Olympian celebrities to carry you through, that can have an impact,” said Shari Anne Brill of New York media firm Carat USA.

But some are also wondering whether NBC might have learned some useful lessons about telecasting future games. Brill, for example, said that thanks to the Internet, viewers often know the results hours before the events are televised. NBC needs “a bigger realization that we already know who won -- and not to pretend that we don’t,” she said. She also said the coverage may benefit from a “broader acknowledgment that this is an international event. There was such an American spin, you didn’t know anything about the other competitors.”

But NBC has plenty of time to weigh such advice. As Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal Television’s chief executive officer, noted in a memo to staff Monday morning, “Remember, there’s just 892 days to go until the Beijing Olympics!”

Read the latest post at latimes.com/channelisland. Scott Collins can be reached at channelisland@latimes.com.