Race for TV gold

One of the most exciting television battles during the next few weeks may be between Paula Abdul and Michelle Kwan.

The Winter Olympics, which opens Friday on NBC from Turin, Italy, is a TV event that traditionally flattens opponents for the network that spent millions of dollars for the right to broadcast it.

But judging by its startling staying power, “American Idol” may steal the spotlight from the skiers and skaters.

“The Olympics aren’t as daunting as people think they are,” says Preston Beckman, the Fox network’s executive vice president for strategic program planning and strategy.

Spoken like someone with Simon Cowell on his side.

Even Fox thought interest in “Idol” would start to wane in its fifth season, but it just keeps picking up more momentum.

Each of the six audition episodes that have aired in the past three weeks has drawn more than 30 million viewers, and two hit the 35 million mark, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The Olympics and “Idol” will air against each other four times during the next few weeks.

“I think ‘American Idol’ wins, except during the finals of the figure skating, if the U.S. is doing well or if there’s some major scandal,” says Steve Sternberg, an analyst for the ad buying firm Magna Global.

The Olympics are still going to be a major TV event, but Sternberg predicts its ratings will be between 15 to 20 percent below the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. American audiences tend to be more interested in Olympic games on American soil, he says.

Rather than cannibalize each other’s audiences, the Olympics and “Idol” are going to bring more people to television, or take viewers away from cable stations, Sternberg says.

That’s partly what Fox was thinking in deciding to stick primarily with its regular schedule during the Olympics. It will air only a handful of reruns and specials, including four straight episodes of the soon-to-be-canceled “Arrested Development” on Friday night opposite the Olympic opening ceremonies.

“The overwhelming number of people who are watching the Olympics don’t watch Fox,” Beckman says. “For us to run away from it is goofy.”

The Winter Olympics tend to draw a lot of older women, and viewers who aren’t big watchers of broadcast networks anyway, he says. That’s why the former NBC executive suspects it may be difficult for his old network to successfully promote its new prime-time shows that will start in March.

The network likely to be most affected by the Olympics is CBS, which generally has the oldest audience. It will avoid showing fresh episodes of most of its series while the games are on.

CBS also will show some action-oriented movies like “Die Another Day” and “Terminator 3” to entice men who couldn’t care less about figure skating.

The biggest difference from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics for CBS is that this year the network started a new edition of “Survivor” and will air it through the games. Four years ago executives waited until after the games.

Faced with a Wednesday night going up against both “American Idol” and the Olympics, ABC will air a rerun of the “Lost” pilot instead of a new episode of the popular drama.

In general, though, ABC plans to be more competitive than it was four years ago with original episodes of series. And it will directly challenge the Olympic closing ceremonies with a two-hour finale for “Dancing With the Stars.”

That’s partly because ABC is in far healthier shape than it was four years ago, says Jeff Bader, the network’s head of scheduling. He’s also not fully convinced of the drawing power for these Olympics, particularly because there are no live events in prime time.

Still, scheduling against the Olympics allows for a little flexibility, Bader says.

“If there are three Americans in contention for the gold medal in figure skating, we can change our minds,” he says.