Michelle Kwan was NBC’s “Survivor” and “American Idol” rolled into one. Now the network is looking at two weeks of prime time in which it may end up “The Biggest Loser.”
The first weekend of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Games in Turin was barely underway before it was all over. The 2006 Kwan Olympics – hyped as the emotional center of NBC’s coverage plan – are officially kaput.
She’s gone, taking NBC’s hopes for ratings gold with her.
Desperate to get Kwan on the air one way or the other, NBC on Sunday offered her a job in the broadcast booth. She declined, reportedly not wanting to be a distraction to her fellow team members.
“The Olympics is the ultimate reality show,” Scott Hamilton told the USA cable audience before Kwan’s pullout. The skater’s injuries conspired to vote her off the island.
Will millions bail with Kwan? “Deal or No Deal?” The viewing public is famously fickle.
Lester Holt of MSNBC delivered word of Kwan’s decision to withdraw, breaking into the network’s repeat prime-time show in the wee hours Sunday with the news.
“But the Games go on,” Jim Lampley said heavily.
That leaves bad-boy Bode (are we bored yet?) Miller to fill the home team spotlight. And his backstory doesn’t tug at the heartstrings like Kwan’s.
Others will be fed to the star-making machinery in Kwan’s absence. Does Miller have something in common with Robert Redford’s protagonist in “Downhill Racer”? Roll the Tom Brokaw-narrated feature comparing the two iconoclasts. Then cut to speedskater Chad Hedrick crying and winning. And pump up the youngest snowboarders. Still, Kwan was the one NBC banked on, and it will be a long fortnight without her.
Already at a disadvantage as the No. 4 network going into the February sweeps, NBC has little chance of skating past steamrollers “American Idol,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Desperate Housewives” or “Survivor.” The eight-hour time difference is a disadvantage (anchor Brian Williams cues viewers to avoid spoilers during news updates). With curling and skeleton hardly household sports in the U.S., the prognosis for the broadcaster looks grim.
NBC did a nice job parodying the 2002 Salt Lake figure skating debacle with a “Days of Our Lives” send-up. (“It wasn’t me, it was a French judge!”) Next how about an “As the World Turns” sequel about the Kwan-less Olympics?
NBC spun the ratings this way: The Olympics drew three times the normal Saturday night audience. (Saturday is traditionally the least-watched TV night of the week.)
“The Olympics remain one of the biggest events on television,” Randy Falco, president and COO, NBC Universal Television Group, said in a statement. “Despite this being the most competitive quarter I’ve seen in my 30 years in the television business, the Olympics continue to perform as they have throughout the past decade, compared to the current network television landscape.”
In other words, he thinks it was worth the $613 million investment in broadcast rights.
An average 23.6 million viewers tuned in to watch NBC’s Saturday prime-time coverage, according to the Nielsen overnight ratings. Denver ranked as the country’s third-highest- metered market, with 35 percent of the viewing audience tuned to the Games on KUSA.
Not bad for a buzz-less Olympics.
(Style note: The television audience knows the site of the Winter Games as “Torino” but the newspaper stylebook goes by the Anglicized name, Turin. By this quaint logic, the 2008 Games will be in Peking.)
The much-touted “Olympic Ice” hour on USA cable, meanwhile, is strictly for hard-core fans who can’t get enough of ice dancing and figure skating from the main NBC feed. It’s too precious and it lags behind the news. As Hamilton confidently announced “she’s a force here,” we’d already seen Kwan leaving practice in tears.
Hoping for traction with younger viewers, NBC used Japanese anime-style cartoons to set up the “Battle of Torino” in the men’s downhill, featuring the Fireball, the Man of Speed and the Herminator.
At the ski jump, meanwhile, NBC acknowledged the lack of action by U.S. hopefuls: “The Finns are flying, the Norwegians have no fear and the Americans are hangin’ around.”
Will the audience do the same?
Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
