Razzle-Dazzle Inflates the Ratings for Olympics on NBC

All those super-duper Winter Olympics numbers you've been hearing about in coverage of the Games -- pure applesauce.

NBC has done so many triple axels with this year's Games numbers you just cannot be too cynical about the stats.

For starters, the network once again is engaged in the ratings doping it has found so useful since the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. That involves running the first half-hour of prime-time coverage on nights that do not start with, say, figure skating as "sustaining."

Which is to say "without network ad breaks."

Which is to say "not rated by Nielsen."

Like this past Saturday and Sunday.

(Grievously, this does not mean you don't have to slog through ad breaks during the first half-hour of prime-time Games coverage on those nights. You certainly did on Saturday and Sunday. But those ad breaks were all local, an NBC network rep confirmed. Local ad breaks don't count when a network wants something run sustaining.)

The difference between the 8 p.m. half-hour and the 8:30 p.m. half-hour, even before daylight saving time kicks in, is pretty significant. For instance, last week, the first half-hour of Tuesday's "American Idol" clocked 28.2 million viewers; the second, 34.2 million.

Leaving out the first half-hour of coverage artificially inflates the ratings.

It also renders comparisons to past Winter Games irrelevant. CBS, for instance, did not run sustaining the first half-hour of prime-time coverage during the Winter Games in Nagano in 1998 or Lillehammer in 1994. (However, CBS did not start its Sunday coverage until 8 because it continued to air "60 Minutes" through both Winter Olympics. Prime time on the broadcast networks starts at 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and at 7 p.m. on Sunday.)

This ratings new math applies only to a broadcast's "average audience." That's the number who watched during an average minute of a broadcast.

But over the weekend, NBC was slinging around numbers such as the 50 million who the network said watched Friday's Opening Ceremonies, making it "the third most viewed non-domestic Winter Olympic Opening Ceremony in history, behind only the tabloid-fueled Lillehammer Games . . . and Nagano."