WMAQ-Ch. 5 is reaping benefits from the 2002 Winter Olympics airing on NBC, but those benefits come with an asterisk.
Nationally, the Winter Games are the bonanza the network expected them to be. Through the first five days of the games, an average of 147 million viewers have tuned in to watch the competitions originating from Salt Lake City, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The 19.8 rating and 31 share through the first five days is 19 percent higher than the viewer numbers of the 1998 Winter Olympics that CBS aired from Nagano, Japan.
From Friday’s Olympic opening night through Tuesday, Channel 5 has averaged a 13.6 rating and 25 share. In Chicago, one rating point equals 33,608 households, so those numbers are significant because Channel 5 has been trying to close the gap between it and top-rated WLS-Ch. 7 for supremacy at 10 p.m.
But here comes the asterisk: The Olympics is pushing the Channel 5 news past its normal 10 p.m. start time, sometimes going to 10:30 p.m., so it hasn’t competed directly with Channel 7, which through the same five-day period at 10 p.m. is averaging a 10.8 rating and 16 share. This compares with the ABC station’s 12.1 rating and 19 share in November.