LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - If an athlete's true test is improving each time on the field, television network NBC is due for laurels when the Athens Olympics end Sunday, but its greater challenge will be launching new shows like "Joey" in coming weeks.

Viewership and advertising profits in Athens, so far, have outstripped the network's Sydney Olympics coverage four years ago -- no small feat given the increasing number of choices and channels on U.S. TV.

But what NBC has done in Athens will not matter as much as what it can do in September with a fall schedule of ambitious shows like computer-animated "Father of the Pride" and cop drama "Hawaii" that it has promoted heavily at the Olympics.

NBC, which is part of General Electric Co. , has high hopes those shows can replace departed mainstays "Friends" and "Frasier" that lured the 18- to 49-year-old viewers coveted by advertisers and kept it ahead of rivals like CBS and Fox.

Through the first 14 days of the 17-day Athens Olympics, NBC has claimed a total 196 million viewers across its various networks, including its cable TV sisters, to become the most watched Olympics excluding games held in the United States. The figure eclipses the Sydney games and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

The company looks reap as much as $70 million, better than its own forecasts that it would match Sydney's cash haul of around $50 million, network executives said this week.

"I think what NBC has figured out is what the model of doing big events is going to be," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University and a pop culture expert.

By broadcasting events on NBC and on affiliated cable TV networks USA, Bravo, MSNBC and CNBC, and Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, the network has learned to "stop the hemorrhaging" of Olympic viewers, Thompson said.

But the true test of what NBC has called the "halo effect" will come beginning next week, when the Olympics have ended and the network starts to roll out its fall schedule.

NBC executives at the highest levels have said they are counting on an Olympic boost to give a strong start to "Hawaii" and "Father of the Pride," as well as the return of reality shows like "Last Comic Standing."

The network will also use a strategy that has worked well in past for Fox and others -- repeating shows in the same week to win the widest audience.

Between Aug. 30 and Sept. 4, both "Father of the Pride" and "Hawaii" will air three times (in a different time slot each time), and "Last Comic Standing" will run twice.

"Father of the Pride," in particular, is a risky call for the network. Animation is not a stalwart in NBC prime-time hours as it has been for Fox with "The Simpsons."

The show is expensive to make and, perhaps riskiest, based on the Las Vegas act of Siegfried & Roy, which was closed after Roy Horn was attacked by one of his tigers last year.

It also will be a test for DreamWorks, the film studio that plans to spin off its successful animation studio, maker of "Shrek," in an initial public stock offering expected this fall.

Then there is "Joey," the spin-off from "Friends" starring Matt LeBlanc, that will begin airing one week later, on Sept. 9, in the old "Friends" time slot.

All those shows have been heavily tried and tested in promotional time slots during the Olympics, and now NBC is waiting to see if they can win their respective medals.