For NBC, No Happy Ending to These Winter Games

Ratings for the Closing Ceremonies in Turin were the lowest since at least the late 1980s. (By Ezra Shaw -- Getty Images)

. . . and, in the end, the Closing Ceremonies of the Winter Games from Turin logged that franchise's lowest rating since at least Nielsen's introduction of people meters in the late 1980s.

According to early stats, about 14 million people watched Cirque du Turin, featuring the March of the 400 Brides, from 7 to 11 p.m. Sunday -- a plunge of Olympic proportions compared with the 39 million who had watched the Closing Ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, over at ABC, more than 27 million viewers catapulted Drew Lachey from Jessica-Simpson's-former-brother-in-law to that-guy-who-won-the-really-ugly-trophy-on-"Dancing With the Stars."

From 8 to 10 p.m., "Dancing With the Stars" beat its nearest competitor, Cirque du Turin, by 12.3 million viewers and by 110 percent among the younger viewers the broadcast networks target.

Around the time Lachey was declared Winner of the Really Ugly Trophy, nearly 30 million were watching, compared with the Closing Ceremonies' 15 million and change.

In fairness, that was about 20 minutes before the Brides began to mill around onstage carrying the Day-Glo Calla Lilies of Hope and hooking up with the Versace Paratroopers to form the Dove of Peace.

"Dancing" wrapped up with nearly 5 million more viewers than last summer's nail-biter, in which that truly unpleasant soap-opera chick stole the win from the TV J. Peterman.

In fact, excluding the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, "Dancing" delivered ABC's biggest audience in the time period in more than eight years.

Over its entire run, this second round of competition on "Dancing With the Stars" averaged almost 19 million viewers.

Over its entire run, the Winter Games from Turin averaged about 20 million viewers -- down about 20 percent compared with the last overseas Winter Olympics, in Nagano in 1998, and down 33 percent among the 18-to-49-year-olds NBC targets.

On the bright side, NBC notes that it will win the week in the ratings for a third consecutive week -- something it has not accomplished in 18 months.

That, by the way, is when NBC covered the Summer Games from Sydney.

In between has been one long dry spell of scripted programming -- and "The Apprentice." Which, in case you missed it, returned to NBC last night, capping a brilliant weeks-long Martha/Donald Mutual Hate Society publicity stunt ginned up, we suspect, by the second-to-none Mark Burnett Manipulation Machine -- Burnett being responsible for producing both divas' shows.