For the first time in six years of utter Neilsen domination, “American Idol” took silver in the ratings game.
NBC’s coverage of the Vancouver Olympics ended the remarkable streak Wednesday night — when “Idol” revealed the Top 24 semi-finalists.
During the 9 p.m. hour — when the two shows went head-to-head — the Olympics drew 30.1 million viewers to “Idol’s” 18.4 million viewers. (In comparison, “Idol” premiered its current season last month with 29.8 million viewers.)
It was easy to understand why, says Lisa Quan, VP and director of audience analysis at Magna.
The night’s big events — the women’s downhill finals and the men’s half pipe finals –are the reason the Olympics trounced “Idol.” Everybody wanted to watch injured Lindsey Vonn’s tape-delayed gold medal downhill run and see snowboarder Shaun White pull off the competition debut of his unique Double Mc-
Twist 1260.
“That happened near the end of the night, and it kept viewership up because people wanted to see what was going on there,” Quan says.
To accomplish the ratings feat, Quan explains that “the Olympics pulls in viewers from other networks, but also pulls in people who wouldn’t normally watch TV on Wednesday nights — overall TV usage is up slightly versus what it would normally be doing.”
Meanwhile, a report on the Olympic ratings issued yesterday by Magna buried the big news of these games in its final paragraph — curling is becoming a cult TV hit. Tuesday’s broadcasts of the men’s and women’s curling matches were the most-watched Olympics events on the cable coverage, the report said.
“It’s a little surprising that curling is attracting this much attention,” Quan says, “because I would’ve thought that ice hockey was stronger.”
It’s likely that “numbers are a little bit stronger” for curling because it was the first of the round robin qualifying events for the shuffleboard-like sport.
“It’s kind of hypnotic watching curling, everything moves very slowly and everything’s very quiet, so you’re really focused on what’s going on.”
Don’t expect to see non-Olympic curling broadcasts replacing regularly scheduled programming like WWE or “Psych” in the future, though.
“It’s because it’s the Olympics that people are willing to watch it,” Quan says. “Curling is not a big sport in the United States like it is in Canada.”