Olympics No Match for Medal-Grinding 'Idol'

"American Idol" continues its scorched-earth campaign to cleanse the television landscape of programming we hold sacred. On Tuesday night it made hash out of the Winter Olympics in their first face-off -- just six days after "Idol" reduced the Grammy Awards to ratings rubble.

Between 8 and 9 p.m., when the tape-delayed, mostly men's figure skating Games coverage was holding the interest of about 16 million viewers, "Idol" was amusing nearly 27 million by dashing the dreams of roomfuls of Ashlee and Usher wannabes.

Among the 18-to-49-year-olds that NBC targets, "Idol" more than doubled the ratings of the Games.Hopefully, the bright young future stars of Fox's "Skating With the Celebrities" competing at the Games in You-Say-Torino-and-I-Say-Turin have not yet received word of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, lest it put them off their game.

NBC's migraine continued at 9 when the Games snagged only about 1.7 million more viewers than Fox's doc drama "House" -- during which, coincidentally, Dr. House learned LSD is a great way to stop that migraine cold. And "House" anesthetized the Games among those younger viewers.

Even though NBC's coverage featured the first U.S. gold medal victory in alpine skiing in a decade, the network was left with the least watched prime-time broadcast of a Winter Olympics since at least 1988 and possibly ever.

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