• by August 17, 2004

AND WE HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE HURDLES YET -- Apparently, it's not just the Athens Olympics stadiums that are full of empty seats. So are NBC's Olympic TV households. Actually, the households appear to be full - more full than usual, in fact - they just don't happen to be tuned to NBC as much as some might have expected. NBC's ratings for the opening of the Athens Games - by far the most creative and watchable Olympics opener ever televised - declined 10 percent from NBC's cover of the Sydney Games in 2000. The fall off varies by demo, but the irony in the declines is that TV usage levels have actually grown 10 percent since the Olympics began, according to an analysis released this week by Magna Global USA.

"On a household basis, about half of NBC's rating gain came from homes that were not watching television the week before, and about one-third came from ad-supported cable. About 15 percent came from other broadcast networks," notes Magna research chief Steve Sternberg, who nonetheless considers the impact to have been only "marginal," despite the fact that the other networks were airing mostly repeats.

"The impact was much greater among adults 50-plus," finds Sternberg, adding, "Among adults 18-49, 65 percent of NBC's rating increase over the previous Friday came from new television viewers, and 23 percent came from ad-supported cable." Only 8 percent came from the other broadcast networks.

Not surprisingly, Sternberg says CBS was most impacted.

WHAT'S BLACK AND BLUE AND BLEEDING RED ALL OVER? - Ordinarily, newspaper circulation seems about as interesting as, well, watching the ink dry on an ABC report. But the spate of circulation scandals reverberating through the publishing industry is suddenly casting a glaring spotlight on the arcane science and on the normally low-profile executives that oversee it. Circulation directors are suddenly the center of attention, even if they're not part of an internal probe. With three major publishers - Belo Corp. (The Dallas Morning News, Holinger International (Chicago Sun-Times), and Tribune Co. (Newsday and Hoy -- coming clean about circulation misstatements to advertisers, speculation is that the scandal could spread to other papers. Not surprisingly, many of the squeakiest cleanest publishers have already begun taking a close look at their circulation operations to ensure that similar problems do not arise.

"For example, E.W. Scripps Co., which has not been linked to any of the circulation discrepancies, has sent questionnaires to its newspapers to review circulation procedures and controls," Reuters reported today.

In fact, Scripps, which publishes the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, has also asked its circ. directors and publishers to sign off on internal forms verifying circulation, says the wire service, adding that those steps come in addition to "the verifications already required when filing reports to the Audit Bureau of Circulations."