Night by night, Games win bigger audience

High drama at the Olympics in Athens on Tuesday -- with swimmer Michael Phelps adding to his gold medal count and the American women gymnasts just missing in their quest for top honors -- added up to a ratings bonanza for NBC, which, after a weak start, has started to draw significantly larger audiences as the Games progress.

More than 30 million viewers tuned in for NBC’s prime-time coverage Tuesday night, substantially more than the numbers garnered by the other five networks combined.

The nearly four hours of prime-time Olympics coverage also dominated among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers whom advertisers and most networks covet. In all, NBC’s telecast was up 16% over the fifth night’s coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. After a slow start the first two nights, NBC has shown growth in each of the last three nights, with 25.8 million viewers Sunday, 27.2 million Monday and 30.1 million Tuesday.

The network has worked hard to build audience interest in U.S. Olympians such as Phelps. In addition, it has tried to harness the power of its expanded media empire, which now includes USA Network, Telemundo, Bravo and MSNBC -- all of which are carrying Olympic programming.

Against this competition, the other networks scrambled for second place Tuesday. The silver medal went to CBS, which posted good-under-the-circumstances numbers for a repeat of “Navy NCIS” and original episodes of the unscripted “Big Brother 5” and “The Amazing Race 5.”