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Olympic ratings off but NBC not disappointed, Ebersol says
[February 20, 2006]

Olympic ratings off but NBC not disappointed, Ebersol says


(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The view from the other side of the Atlantic is the Winter Olympics are doing just fine when it comes to attracting U.S. television viewers. That's what Dick Ebersol said Monday from his bunker deep inside NBC Olympic headquarters in Turin.



Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Sports and Olympics, came up for air to participate in a teleconference, heralding his network's hiring of Jerome Bettis as an analyst for its upcoming "Football Night in America" studio shows. Bettis, the recently retired feel-good story of Super Bowl XL, will join Bob Costas and Cris Collinsworth on Sundays during the NFL season.

But the focus of the interview soon turned from the "Bus" to the business of Olympic ratings. And Ebersol was ready. He opened by saying that viewership, while off considerably from Salt Lake City in 2002 and Nagano is 1998, continues to meet ratings projections and that there has been no discussion of "make goods" for advertisers.


"Make goods" is the dirtiest phrase in the TV business. When advertising is sold, it comes with guaranteed minimum ratings. If those guarantees are not met, the network has to give advertisers future free or discounted commercial time.

"We're sitting on a mountain of $900 million in cash," Ebersol declared, referring to a pile that's mostly come from the sale of prime-time commercial inventory. "...We see a profit between $50 million and $75 million, closer to $75 million."

Prime-time ratings for Turin are down 50 percent from Salt Lake City and 25 percent from Nagano. For bookkeeping purposes, NBC logically prefers Turin comparisons to Nagano rather than Salt Lake City, which gave NBC a prime-time live, home-country advantage. Turin and Nagano are foreign Winter Games with videotaped offerings in prime time. "Are the Olympics off?" Ebersol asked rhetorically. "Yeah, a bit, like other sporting events and other glamour events."

He refused to blame what some are calling disappointing performances from hyped U.S. athletes. Rather, he pointed to the ever-expanding TV universe of cable offerings and omnipresent Internet results.

According to Ebersol, the NBA Finals are down 56 percent since the Nagano Games eight years ago. Monday Night Football is down 22 percent, and the World Series 21 percent. Meanwhile, the Academy Awards are down 27 percent, and the Grammys are off 32 percent.

He also pointed out that NBC still has won the last two weeks in the ratings against from the competition at ABC, CBS and Fox. That's the first time NBC has won weeks since the Athens Olympics two years ago.

There's nothing like a Winter Olympics to boost Daytona 500 ratings. The Great American Race earned a record 11.3 rating for NBC on Sunday. That breaks the old NBC mark of 10.9 set on the second Sunday of the 2002 Winter Games and duplicated last year by Fox. The NBA All-Star Game ratings on TNT were not available Monday because of the Presidents Day holiday.

NBC faces tough sledding this week. Fox's "American Idol" will air for two hours on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and one hour on Thursday. Idol twice out-rated the Olympics last week. Thursday, with the ladies gold-medal free skate, is traditionally the highest-rated night of the Winter Games.

Only this time, NBC will face three ratings powerhouses _ Fox's Idol from 8 to 9 p.m. EST, ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" from 8 to 9:30 p.m., and CBS' "Survivor" from 8 to 9 p.m.

You want reality?

Figure skating analyst Scott Hamilton believes nothing can touch the Olympics when it comes to reality TV. "The Olympics happen every four years.

"You have the best of the best representing the United States and the world coming together to celebrate youth and excellence. ... This is a historic event. The ultimate reality television is the Olympic Games. It inspires everything else. I look at the ladies (figure skating) championships as being the marquee event. If you want to watch reality television, then there's nothing better than the Olympic Games."

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