KEY POINTS:
New Zealand is turning into a nation of night-owls, as hundreds of thousands of us stay up watching Olympic sports into the wee hours.
A head count from AGB Nielsen media research found more than 400,000 New Zealanders were still watching early on Saturday as Beijing 2008 kicked off with drummers, human calligraphers and "footprints" of fireworks.
Almost as many people again tuned in for the next day's replay.
Altogether, almost one in five New Zealanders watched the opening ceremony, dwarfing the 91,000 people who watched live in Beijing's National Stadium.
A TVNZ spokesman said it was "very unusual" to see so many people still watching television at midnight. Many viewers stayed up to watch after 3 o'clock on Saturday morning.
And the Olympic-watching fever carried on into the weekend, with hundreds of thousands of viewers staying up well into the night on Saturday and Sunday.
How many of us keep watching will be up to the athletes. Media analyst Michael Carney said whether people stuck around for the next two weeks of TV coverage depended on the performance of the Kiwi team.
TVNZ said that since the opening ceremony Beijing had delivered almost a third more viewers than Athens in 2004.
AGB Nielsen figures show the number of live watchers for the opening ceremony was barely lower than in 2004, when the ceremony screened at the more sociable time of 7-9am.
Rowing has proved especially popular. More than 460,000 viewers tuned in to watch Mahe Drysdale and the team compete in their heats on Saturday afternoon.
But the weekend's biggest audiences went to TV One's Peter Williams and his live coverage from Beijing, which started at 7pm on Saturday and Sunday. More than 700,000 people stayed on after the news to watch the coverage - a fact Mr Carney said was not surprising given that it was the time most people were able to watch television.
Mr Carney said the Olympic Games were one of the few television events that could still get people watching in such big numbers.
"It's certainly living up to expectations."
