On the other side of its $30 million investment in 1996 Summer Olympics rights, the cbc, boosted by the International Olympics Committee’s new rules, scored ratings gold for the two weeks through Aug. 4 with eyeballs consistently eclipsing ctv’s ’94 Barcelona Olympics audience numbers.

The opening ceremonies, with 2.9 million average viewers, according to A.C. Nielsen, almost doubled ctv’s ’94 telecast draw of 1.5 million, and set the tone for the duration of events coverage, which consistently left Lillehammer in the dust.

(Radio-Canada, too, was over the moon with opening-ceremony numbers, garnering 1.4 million francophone viewers.)

At Playback press time, Nielsen numbers for the last weekend had yet to make it through process, but the men’s four-by-four relay Aug. 3 is guaranteed to have eclipsed weekend one, which itself was no slouch.

The ‘Atlanta Explosion News Special’ clustered 1.3 million viewers around the tube July 27, leading up to Donovan Bailey’s record run which drew er-like numbers at 3.2 million viewers 9-9:30 p.m. and capped a primetime average for the day of 2.1 million viewers. Sunday’s primetime average held at 1.8 million, almost double ctv’s day-nine prime at 1 million viewers.

Radio-Canada pulled in network audiences of 517,000 and 472,000 in primetime on July 27 and 28 respectively.

For week one, the average primetime audience ran to 1.6 million viewers 2+ for the first three days of events, rising to 1.8 million by July 25 and landing at 1.6 million by the end of the week. Swimming finals and women’s gymnastics peaked armchair athlete participation through the week at 2.6 million and 2 million respectively, with women consistently making up 50% of the audience.

That this year’s Games were broadcast in the same time zone played a role in increased audience ratings, but perhaps less so than ioc’s new caveat which limits non-rights-holding broadcasters to two minutes of highlights per day, aired after 11 p.m. CBC Newsworld, with exclusive rights to highlights, recaps and updates, increased its primetime viewership by 35% over the same two-week period in 1995.

Word in the media-buying community is that Olympics ad revenue targets were mission accomplished. With 200 staff, two control rooms, 10 edit suites, a 20-machine record room, three offline audio booths, five unilateral camera machines, 11 hand-held camera units – all clustered to produce 14 hours of tv for 14 days – and the $30 million for rights, the competition had projected $49 million as the break-even benchmark. Ad packages were reportedly being sold for between $3 million and $6 million.