Ratings lagging past 3 Games

By SHARON GINN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 21, 2000

NBC sent out a cheerful news release Wednesday chock full of the best quotes, observations and moments from the first five days of its coverage of the Games.

Just in case we missed them the first time.

According to the numbers, many people did. The network's cheerfulness has to be somewhat forced: The first four days garnered an average prime time rating of 14.3 and a 25 share, well below not only Atlanta's coverage up to that point but below the first several nights of the '92 Barcelona and '88 Seoul Games.

Each ratings point represents 1,008,000 households. Share represents the percentage of TV sets in use tuned to the show. Tuesday night's ratings were the first to fall within the network's projections (between 17.5 and 18.5 for prime time), garnering a 17.8 rating and a 28 share between 8 and 11 p.m. But it may take a Herculean effort to recover -- and we don't mean one like once-great Turkish weightlifter Naim "Pocket Hercules" Suleymanoglu put forth in Sydney.

Clearly, people are less than enamored with these Olympics, and there are many reasons why.

Even though the Americans are leading the medal count, no team or individual seems to have captured the imagination of the folks back home. That may change as Marion Jones begins her pursuit of five track and field gold medals.

Diehard Olympics fans, and even some casual viewers, are irritated that most of NBC's prime-time coverage is 12 to 24 hours old. The taped approach worked for the Games in Seoul, but that was before the Internet and the availability of round-the-clock sports news.

Finally, the odd time of year -- well into football season and with some races for baseball playoff spots going on -- has further diluted viewership.

Locally, the telecasts are faring slightly better, but they're no match for the Bucs. Sunday's Bucs-Lions game on WTVT-Ch. 13 garnered a whopping 32.9 rating and 50 share, meaning a third of the area's approximately 1.5-million homes had the game on. The Olympics had a 6.5 rating during that time for WFLA-Ch. 8.

Over the first five nights of coverage, Ch. 8 is averaging about a 16.2 share.

YOU DON'T SAY: NBC isn't to blame for all its troubles, but why annoy viewers unnecessarily?

Cable station MSNBC has a weekday program called The News With Brian Williams. It airs from 9-10 p.m. and includes, according to MSNBC.com, "all the day's news and information from around the world!"

For these two weeks, Williams also is hosting an Olympics show from 5-6 p.m after MSNBC's daily coverage ends. It's clear that even though he is a news anchor, Williams is not going to give us the latest Olympic results because that would dull the impact of NBC's prime time coverage. Fine.

But Monday, Williams' live show -- during which he had a live interview with NBC analyst and former Olympic swimmer Summer Sanders -- featured a "preview" of the swimming events that were to be aired during prime time that night. Those events had ended nearly 12 hours earlier.

Sanders, who was being interviewed about 9 a.m. Tuesday Australia time, started to give fresh information about Tuesday's events -- the nerve! -- but backtracked before giving anything away.

GO FIGURE: Apparently, the truth is less frightening than fiction.

Hundreds of viewers reportedly complained to NBC about a Nike ad that shows Olympic distance runner Suzy Favor Hamilton being chased by a chain saw-wielding maniac, prompting the network to remove the ad from its Olympic telecasts. Nike said it was trying to be funny and promote the idea that sport helps people live longer (Hamilton outran the hockey-mask-wearing killer).

Days later, an NBC spokeswoman said nobody had complained about an anti-smoking commercial that shows 1,200 realistic-looking body bags (they're stuffed with paper) being piled outside a tobacco company office building. The ad, rejected by all four major networks for the February sweeps but carried for months by MTV, is meant to illustrate how many people die every day from tobacco use.

FINE TUNING: MSNBC's Tuesday coverage closed with a soccer montage featuring a "Cantor counter" that kept track of the longest "Goooaaaal!" call by famed soccer broadcaster Andres Cantor. The longest was 14 seconds. ... NBC will equip U.S. center Alonzo Mourning, who leaves Friday for the birth of his child, with a camera for his trip home. No word, says NBC, on whether wife Tracy will agree to have the camera anywhere near the delivery room.

- Information from other news organizations was used in this report.

On The Wire