Lisa de Moraes, the acerbic TV columnist at
The Washington Post, takes a hammer to NBC, which, let's face it, did not attract huge numbers to the Winter Games in Turin (uh, Turino in NBC
speak). Was this the network's fault? Did it fail in its coverage? There's no evidence of that, nor any accusation. It's just that, when all was said and done, it appears that American audiences
simply were not drawn to this year's Games, for whatever reason. Instead, they tuned in to homegrown, low-brow fare, such as "Dancing With the Stars" and "American Idol." De
Moraes: "In its final week of Games coverage, NBC broadcast networks averaged fewer than 20 million viewers. Over its entire coverage, NBC averaged just over 20 million, a steep decline from the
nearly 32 million a night average for the Salt Lake City Winter Games in '02 and the 25.1 million for Nagano in '98. Among the 18-to-49-year-olds NBC targets, the Turin Games took a nosedive; last
week Fox won prime time in the coveted age bracket. Fox says it's the first time in at least 25 years a network has outstripped a full week of Olympics coverage in that demographic." Ouch. For
the record, NBC says it's pleased by the results, and its spin differs from that of the
Post's writer.
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