The Winter Olympics were the Women Olympics on NBC. For the first time in Winter Games history, NBC televised more minutes of women’s competition than men’s.

“You just want the best stories,” Jim Bell, NBC’s president of production and programming, said from Pyeongchang in a phone conversation just prior to the final weekend broadcasts. “We at NBC, we just want to tell the best stories.”

With the United States’ overall medal count a disappointment, NBC was not dealt a perfect hand these Games, as many of the pre-Olympic storylines did not pan out. While the overall ratings were down in primetime TV around 8 percent, following the overall trend in live sports, Bell said that NBC routinely doubled the other broadcast networks “combined.”

Meanwhile, NBCSN dominated cable and digital streaming, reaching two billion minutes streamed, which provides an outlet for monetization to help offset the nearly $1 billion NBC paid for these Games.

In these Olympics, nearly 52 percent of the coverage came from women’s events, according to a study by the University of Alabama’s communication’s school. It was largely because of women like Mikaela Shiffrin, who won an early gold in the giant slalom and became an attraction throughout the event. Lindsey Vonn, in likely her last Olympics, only won one bronze, but she was a compelling watch because of many injuries and comebacks to go along with her honoring her late grandfather, who was in the Korean War. Plus, the United States’ women’s hockey team broke through to win gold.

In the Winter Games, there is usually a huge gap in favor of men’s coverage over women’s — 20 percent or more, according to Andrew Billings, the University of Alabama’s chair of its broadcast journalism and creative media department. In Sochi, four years ago, the gap closed to less than 6 percent, Billings said.

By contrast, Summer Olympics in London in 2012 and the Rio Olympics in 2016 featured slightly more women’s coverage than men’s.

More women watched the Olympics than men. About 55 percent of the audience was female, according to NBC. The US won 23 medals overall, which was fourth best.

“People don’t tune in to see how the men do or the women do,” Billings said. “They tune it to see how the United States does.”

It is probably best for NBC if the United States cleans house and wins the most gold medals and all the dynamic storylines play themselves out.

“One of the great things about the Olympics is you come in with a certain level of expectations about who the stars are going to be and who is going to be standing on the podium,” Bell said.

In the end, on TV, it was the women who ruled.