Thank You For Being a Friend

Now this is news. Nothing says you've made it like competing with a Zbornak, Petrillo, Neyland and Devereaux. You're in great company, Michael!

"EOnline: August 19, 2008

Mark Spitz has been vanquished. But not so Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia.

Michael Phelps' Spitz-sinking swim on Saturday elevated NBC to its best ratings on the once-mighty, now-dead night in about a generation.

Still, the golden boy of the Beijing Games couldn't topple The Golden Girls, which held on to its title as NBC's most-watched Saturday-night show of the last 18 years.

Overall, NBC's first full week of Olympic action was ratings gold, with the network scoring the most lopsided Nielsen wins in more than 20 years.

Through last night, NBC said, the Beijing Games were averaging 29.6 million prime-time viewers, up 13 percent over the 2004 Athens Games.

Add in the viewers watching table tennis, kayaking, etc., on MSNBC, USA and other NBC sister networks, and 200 million people overall tuned in the Summer Games' first 11 days, NBC said.

Network sports chief Dick Ebersol credited the surge in interest to "the mystery of China," and the success of U.S. atheletes, led by Phelps.

A Phelps race, women's gymnastics and beach volleyball combined to average 34 million viewers for last Tuesday's Olympic card, which finished No. 1 in the latest Nielsen Media Research rankings.

In the silver-medal position was Saturday's Olympic coverage, which averaged 31.6 million prime-time viewers, and featured Phelps' final swim of the games.

The climactic race earned Phelps his eighth gold medal of this Olympics, surpassing Spitz's 36-year-old record, and earned NBC its biggest number on the night since a Feb. 24, 1990 episode of The Golden Girls ("Twice in a Lifetime") averaged 32 million viewers.

While Phelps came up shy of toppling Dorothy, et al, he did surpass the Feb. 24, 1990 episode of Empty Nest, a Golden Girls spinoff, which "only" averaged 31.4 million viewers.

Apparently before uncovering the Golden Girls rating, NBC, in fact, awarded Phelps its Nielsen gold medal in a press release that trumpeted the swimmer's victory over Empty Nest.

In the end, not even The Golden Girls could match the 40 million that NBC averaged for the 11 p.m. half-hour that featured the decisive Phelps race."