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Thank you, Katniss Everdeen.
NBC Sports has announced that archery has emerged as the most popular Olympics sport on its cable coverage over the first few days of the London Games. The bow and arrows crowd averaged 1.5 million viewers when the competition came on TV -- more than men's and women's basketball and beach volleyball.
In other words, archery has become this summer Games' version of curling which has become a cult hit on TV over the past two Winter Olympics.
Archery is the new curling.
The driving force is clearly the popularity of "The Hunger Games," which features the arrow-slinging Katniss, with an assist from Hawkeye of "The Avengers." But NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus also gave some props to American archer Brady Ellison, who looks like he could easily play Hawkeye on screen and has developed to a major draw on his own.
And perhaps the folks happiest with this Olympics archery fever are the executives at another TV network -- the CW. The big new show on the CW fall schedule is "Arrow," a modern take on the Green Arrow from DC Comics who was the original bow and arrow superhero.
