The Closing Ceremony on Sunday had only 14.8 million viewers, and was clobbered by ABC's finale of ''Dancing With the Stars.''
But the Games were still a triumph for Utah NBC affiliate KSL Channel 5 because Salt Lake City was the most-watched television market for the 17-day event, beating out the No. 2 area, Denver, by nearly three ratings points, according to NBC.
"We were No. 1 every night of Olympic [prime time] except for two nights," said KSL's research director, Jenny Love. "Knowing we were up against first-run programming - which was a new strategy from the other networks - it was still a strong-performing Olympics."
It was also a boon for KSL's 6:30 p.m. time slot. Usually reserved for the news, KSL instead produced a portion of "Olympic Zone," an NBC show that airs locally produced content about affiliates' hometown Olympic athletes.
In that time slot, KSL logged a 9.6 percent increase in viewership, a healthy increase, if not quite what KSL projected.
"It was probably not quite as high as we were hoping it would be," Love said. "We were pretty optimistic with the Games, and I was still pleased with what we got. How can you not be pleased - you're the No. 1 market for viewing."
Nationally, however, it was a disheartening showing for NBC in prime time. The network had promised its advertisers an average of between 12 and 14 ratings points for the Games and barely made it: The average rating was 12.2, according to Nielsen Media Research. Each ratings point represents 1.1 million households.
NBC had expected ratings to go down from Salt Lake City because of the time difference and a rise in patriotism following the 2001 terrorist attacks, but plainly hoped the drop wouldn't be as steep. Salt Lake City averaged 31.9 million viewers a night, while the 1998 Nagano Games averaged 25.1 million.
The network said its cable and Internet coverage showed growth, slightly mitigating the prime-time problems.
Among viewers 18 to 49, ratings for the Turin Games were down 45 percent. Advertisers are most interested in these young viewers, who abandoned the Olympics in large numbers for Fox's ''American Idol.''
In fact, among this youthful demographic, NBC didn't even win in prime time last week - Fox did. That's an unheard of slump for a television event as popular as the Olympics.
For the week of Feb. 20-26, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: ''American Idol'' (Wednesday), Fox, 31.68 million; ''American Idol'' (Tuesday), Fox, 30.16 million; ''Dancing With the Stars'' (Sunday), ABC, 27.22 million; ''Winter Olympics'' (Thursday), NBC, 25.72 million; ''Winter Olympics'' (Tuesday), NBC, 25.07 million; ''Grey's Anatomy,'' ABC, 24.76 million; ''American Idol'' (Thursday), Fox, 23.37 million; ''Winter Olympics'' (Monday), NBC, 22.48 million; ''Dancing With the Stars'' (Thursday), ABC, 17.7 million; ''Winter Olympics'' (Saturday), 16.54 million.
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Tribune staff writer Vince Horiuchi contributed to this report.
