A large number of news and information sites are seeing double-digit traffic increases tied to the Games.

A large number of news and information sites are seeing double-digit traffic increases tied to the Games. When the Russian women's gymnastics team walked away from the Olympics finals with a silver medal on Tuesday, the six team members had tears of disappointment, not pride, in their eyes. The Russian team had gone to Sydney with one goal: Bring home the gold. The same is true for NBC. When the TV network agreed to pay $705 million for the TV rights to the Sydney 2000 Olympics, it knew that anything short of ratings gold would be utter defeat. So far, it doesn't look good. In its first five days covering the Games, the network's ratings fell below those of prior Olympics. They are down nearly 36 percent from those of the Atlanta Games in 1996, 20 percent below those of Barcelona in 1992 and 12 percent below those of Seoul in 1988. The low numbers may force NBC to offer free spots to advertisers, who were promised higher ratings. Pundits are blaming the underwhelming TV audience on a number of factors: the tape-delayed coverage, a generally disappointing showing by American athletes, the beginning of the football season and the end of the baseball season (which compete with the Games for viewers), and NBC's lackluster production. "Even CBS (CBS)' Survivor series seemed to have more immediacy than these Olympic Games," says Tom Shales, TV critic for the Washington Post (WPO) . NBC may be delaying its coverage of the games, but much of the Net isn't. Beyond the sports sites, Internet destinations from newspaper sites to America Online (AOL) are publishing exhaustive news and analysis. "There is some marvelously innovative coverage going on in the Internet across the world," admits Kevin Monaghan, VP of business development for NBC Sports.