Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Lance Armstrong big by OWN standards

There was little doubt that Oprah Winfrey was going to draw some pretty great ratings for her interview with Lance Armstrong … but didn’t anyone else think that it actually would have received even more attention than it did?

Overall, the first part of the interview between the talk-show icon and the disgraced cyclist, who openly admitted to using a myriad of performance-enhancing drugs and a variety of other banned substances in order to win the Tour de France on multiple occasions, ended up scoring 3.2 million viewers. This is the second-largest audience ever for OWN, and it trails only the interview between Oprah and Whitney Houston’s family not long after the legendary singer’s family.

Ironically, Armstrong may have another athlete to blame for his interview not doing better than it did: Manti Te’o. Earlier this week, the media could not get enough about Lance and his possible confession after years of lying to the public. However, the shocking scandal involving the Notre Dame football star, who was in a relationship for several months with a woman who never died as advertised … largely because she never lived to begin with. The media went crazy with this story the moment it was announced, and it’s possible that Oprah hurt herself badly by having it leaked that there was a confession by the cyclist during the interview … which is really what everyone wanted to know more so than some of the finer details of his life.

On a personal standpoint, we found Oprah’s interview with David Letterman, where he talked about everything from Jay Leno to his cheating scandal, to be far more fascinating.

Are you surprised at all at the numbers for Oprah’s show? If you want to see more on this story, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: OWN