Watchdog

Sunday's closing ceremony from Beijing attracted 15.2 percent of U.S. homes, the best for a non-domestic Summer Olympics since 1976. That's an impressive accomplishment in this era of ever-diminishing ratings on broadcast networks.

Overall, the Olympics averaged 27.7 million viewers and 16.2 percent of homes in prime time, well above the Athens Games four years ago, despite a significant dip in the second, post-Michael Phelps week.

NBC also is touting the Olympics as the most watched event in TV history, with 211 million people through Saturday, but that includes anyone who watched at least six minutes on any channel on any day. That number is of little interest to advertisers.

Still, the overall numbers were excellent. The 16.2 average was the best for a non-U.S. Summer Olympics since Barcelona in 1992 (17.1), in a far less fractured media environment.

NBCOlympics.com also piled up huge numbers, with 75.5 million video streams, 51.9 million unique users, 1.24 billion page views and 9.9 million hours of video consumed.

Here are the top 10 major markets in average rating for the Games:

T1. Denver 23.1
T1. Salt Lake City 23.1
3. Minneapolis 22.1
T4. Indianapolis 21.3
T4. San Diego 21.3
T6. Baltimore 21.1
T6. Oklahoma City 21.1
8. Nashville 21.0
9. Columbus, Ohio 20.4
10. Portland, Ore. 20.2