Olympic opening ceremony ratings are worthy of a silver medal

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

According to numbers released by NBC, Friday night’s Olympics opening ceremony telecast was the most-watched for a non-U.S.-hosted Winter Games. Thought Vancouver, Canada, is almost U.S., isn’t it?

The numbers say 67.5 million viewers watched (word has it some of us even saw it live in places far away from Vancouver like New York but not in places closer to Vancouver like Los Angeles).

If anyone is interested (consider this a shameless plug), here’s a link to my Twitter reactions to the ceremony.

But those of us whining about the non-live coverage in the West time zone? NBC will just mock us. According to rankings by time zone Friday night, the two places that didn’t get a live broadcast, Mountain and Pacific, had the best ratings:

METERED MARKET RATINGS BY TIME ZONE:
Mountain Time Zone 21.2/36
Pacific Time Zone 19.8/36
Eastern Time Zone 18.9/31
Central Time Zone 18.6/30

Not surprisingly, the Seattle market did the best. Vancouver is practically next door. A little surprisingly, Los Angeles didn’t crack the top 20 market-wise. Yet West Palm Beach was fifth. Go figure.

Here are the top 20 markets:

1. Seattle, 25.9/47
2. Milwaukee, 25.8/43
3. Denver, 25.4/44
4. St. Louis, 23.7/40
5. West Palm Beach, 23.3/35
6. Cleveland, 23.1/38
7. Salt Lake City, 22.3/39
8. Columbus, 21.8/37
9. Ft. Myers, 21.4/ 34
10. Detroit, 21.1/34
11. Portland, 21.1/39
12. Providence, 21.0/36
T13. Richmond, 20.9/33
T13. Baltimore, 20.9/32
15. Sacramento, 20.6/38
16. San Francisco, 20.3/39
T17. Boston, 20.2/36
T17. Indianapolis, 20.2/34
T17. Nashville, 20.2/30
T20. Chicago, 20.1/33
T20. Buffalo, 20.1/33

-- Diane Pucin