Give a gold medal to “American Idol.”
NBC’s efforts to strike ratings gold were thwarted by the popular Fox show on Tuesday night, according to News Corp.
The two-hour “Idol” episode was seen by a whopping 23.6 million viewers — while NBC said its coverage of the Vancouver Games drew 20.3 million despite a lineup that featured men’s figure skating and women’s snowboarding.
“Idol,” which is in its ninth season and the most-watched TV show in the country, also won the ratings war against the Olympics four years ago when they were held in Torino, Italy.
Overall, NBC won last week’s ratings battle with an average of about 16 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
A new episode of “Lost” on ABC at 9 p.m. generated 7.4 million viewers, while CBS aired reruns of “NCIS” and “The Good Wife.”
NBC has said it plans to televise more than 800 hours of Olympics programming over 17 days — twice the amount of coverage compared to the 2006 Winter Games — on its network and cable channels CNBC, MSNBC, Universal HD and USA.
NBC’s telecast of of the opening ceremony on Friday night was the most-watched program of last week after it was seen by nearly 33 million viewers.
Prime-time coverage of the Winter Games over the weekend ranked third and fourth, respectively, according to Nielsen.
Overall, NBC’s ratings are 25 percent better this year when compared to 2006, in part because Vancouver is a lot closer than Torino to the East Coast when it comes to airing sports live in prime-time.
But critics have complained that the Olympics have not been must-see TV because of NBC’s refusal to show all the events live. For instance, Tuesday night’s snowboarding was on tape delay, while the figure skating was live on the East Coast.
NBC has broadcast events to West Coast viewers on tape-delay even though they share a time zone with Vancouver.
Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post.