Liz Baidoo isn't just watching the Olympics, she's Facebooking, Twittering and TiVoing so she won't miss a nanosecond of the competition and drama.

"It kind of overtakes me a little bit," said Baidoo, 31, a Sacramento, Calif., resident who says her current title at Vision Service Plan is "public relations specialist, slash Olympics diehard fan."

Baidoo isn't alone in her mania. Local residents switched on their TVs and made the Sacramento market the third best in the country for Friday night's Opening Ceremonies, behind San Diego and West Palm Beach, Fla.

Across the country, an average of 31.3 million people are tuning into the Games nightly on TV, and 21.2 million people have visited NBCOlympics.com to watch 17.7 million video streams, putting this on track to be the most watched Olympics in history, according to NBC Universal.

What's fueling our obsession? Stir together the mystique of China, a nation mired in war and starving for heroes — witness our fascination with the Hollywood variety this summer — and improved technology that allows us to watch much of what we want, when we want.

"These Olympics have become a significant cultural event that this country is sharing," Alan Wurtzel, NBC's research president, said in a conference call. "And you almost never get that in these days of fractionalized media."

While NBC's 3,600 hours of planned Olympics coverage means it would take 150 days of 24-hour-a-day watching to see it all, people are still clamoring for more.

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