Come Fly With Us

(From The New York Post -- By Michael Starr)

Turin stages Olympic-size rescue of NBC.

Okay, so here's how important the Olympics are to NBC:

Over the first three nights of THE TURIN WINTER GAMES,
NBC averaged 23.3 million viewers -- and won back-to-back nights for the first time in nearly a year-and-a-half, since the last Olympics (2004 Summer Games in Athens).

While the opening-weekend numbers were down nearly
50 percent from the opening weekend of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, put into context they reveal another story for a network struggling for viewers.

Compare, for instance, last weekend's 23.3 million viewership average to what NBC averaged the same weekend in 2005 -- only 9.4 million viewers from
February 11th-13th -- and it's easy to see how much these games mean to a network struggling for viewers.