VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Each morning here at 7:30, inside a compound at the International Broadcasting Center roughly the size of Belarus, NBC Olympics Chairman Dick Ebersol gathers a small flock of his key lieutenants to discuss contingency plans and every possible scenario for that day's coverage. Along with everything else on the agenda for the tired executives and producers, Ebserol preaches one mantra:

Protect the primetime show.

"It's no secret: the primetime show is the flagship" said David Neal, the executive vice president of NBC Olympics. "That show has to be protected. That show has to be compelling every night. That is the mother ship, and we have to maintain it as an attractive vehicle no matter what."

And that is where ratings come in because primetime is where the eyes are. NBC has averaged 26 million viewers for the first 10 nights of the Olympics, up 27 percent from Turin. It's 14.5 national rating for primetime (each rating point equals about 1 percent of the 114.9 million US television households) is well ahead of Turin but below Salt Lake and Nagano. The highlights from Vancouver include beating American Idol last Wednesday -- the first time that show had been beaten since May 2004 -- and tripling the audience of Grey's Anatomy the following night.