2004 Olympics: Barry Horn

08:56 PM CDT on Thursday, August 26, 2004

Of all the ratings numbers NBC is crowing about, the most amazing has to be the number of unique viewers who have tuned in to watch a piece of the Olympics. According to Nielsen Media Research, 193 million different viewers had tuned in through Wednesday night.

That's 70 percent of the U.S. population.

At a comparable time back in Sydney, 176 million had tuned in. That puts Athens 10 percent ahead of Sydney.

The 193 million already has surpassed the 185 million total at the end of the Sydney Games.

At 2:20 p.m. Thursday, the score of the women's soccer gold medal game was Team USA 1, Brazil 0 in the second half on Telemundo while it was 0-0 in the first half on NBC. That's because Telemundo broadcast the game live, and NBC decided to go with a one-hour tape delay. Both games were presented commercial-free while the ball was in play.

Besides going live, Telemundo gets the coverage nod over NBC for having Andres Cantor in the play-by-play seat even if it is from a sterile studio. His "GOOOAL!" call gets all the attention, but his inflections, pace and volume are priceless as well.

Cantor, by the way, came up with the proper way to spell his "GOOOAL!" call for the title of his autobiography.

The Olympics have been very good for NBC's cable networks. The number of viewers who have stopped by CNBC, MSNBC, USA and Bravo is up 62 percent compared to July. NBC is calling the jump in all Olympic-related programming "The Halo Effect."

Dallas-Fort Worth is ranked 23rd among the 55 major markets around the country. KXAS (Channel 5) is averaging a 19.2 rating in prime time.

At the top of the list are Salt Lake City (27.1) Portland (23.1) and San Francisco (22.8).

While the Olympic spirit continues to grip Salt Lake City, home of the 2002 Winter Games, Atlanta, which hosted the last American Summer Games in 1996, is 43rd, averaging a 15.4.

Bringing up the rear are Miami (13.5), South Carolina's Greenville-Spartanburg (13.7), Birmingham, Ala. (13.9), Knoxville, Tenn. 14.2 and Charlotte, N.C., 14.4.

Such a relatively poor showing in the South means only one thing:

NBC Sports and Olympics czar Dick Ebersol will petition the International Olympic Committee to add NASCAR events for the Beijing Games in 2008.

And the final word goes to USA basketball analyst Doug Collins, a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic team that lost the gold to the Soviet Union after extra time was added to the scoreboard. Collins said this while officials conferrred about an apparent scoreboard error in Thursday's U.S.-Spain quarterfinal game: "Every time I see this, I get a flashback of '72. A committee meeting at the scoring table and I think, 'Uh -oh, what's going to come out of this conversation?' "

E-mail bhorn@dallasnews.com