THE WALKING DEAD WALKS OVER WINTER OLYMPICS

Ratings for NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics plunged 16 percent on Sunday from the comparable date at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, and AMC’s The Walking Dead may have been responsible. Ratings figures released on Tuesday indicated that the drama averaged a 6.8 rating among viewers 18-49, substantially higher than the 5.6 recorded by the Sochi games. Among total adult viewers the Games led with 21.1 million, while the Dead averaged 13.3 million. Nevertheless, that was more than any program on either broadcast or cable TV has drawn since the Games began, with the exception of CBS’s Beatles special, The Night That Changed America, which averaged 13.9 million viewers the previous Sunday.