CBS’ Olympic Gold : Television: Network, which sold 95% of its advertising time before the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, expects to turn a profit with coverage of winter games.

CBS expects to make a profit with its TV coverage of the Winter Olympics next month, and not because of heightened public interest in the ladies figure skating competition following the attack on U.S. figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.

Indeed, the network had sold about 95% of the advertising time before the Jan. 6 assault in which the ex-husband and bodyguard of Kerrigan rival Tonya Harding have been implicated. CBS’ Olympic advertising sales plan bundles commercial time in packages, giving sponsors spots at different times of the day, rather than in specific slots or sports.

Therefore, the network could not have profited from the attack on Kerrigan without overhauling its plan and risking offending already committed sponsors, said George Schweitzer, the CBS Broadcast Group’s senior vice president for marketing and communications.

But there are at least two ways that CBS does figure to benefit from the attack on Kerrigan.

First, the network has scheduled a prime-time special Feb. 5, one week before the Olympics begin, featuring exhibitions by Kerrigan and other top skaters taped a day earlier. That will be her first performance in front of spectators since the attack. CBS expects the ads to sell out for that show and is looking forward to high ratings.

Second, with CBS having won the bidding earlier this month for the exclusive U.S. television rights for the 1998 Winter Games, the network figures to be able to sell commercial time for that event at higher rates because of the anticipated higher ratings for next month’s competition.

The Feb. 5 exhibition came about after the network was approached by ProServe, the Arlington, Va.-based sports marketing, management and television company that represents Kerrigan. CBS is paying an undisclosed fee to ProServe for the broadcast rights.

CBS said it also has an agreement with Kerrigan and ProServe for prospective post-Olympic events with her. Figure skating, for example, may be an element in CBS’ Sunday sports programming this fall as a replacement for the National Football League games it lost to Fox Broadcasting, and Kerrigan would be a likely participant.

Network officials and advertising executives say the prospects for CBS turning a profit on the Feb. 12-27 games--it reportedly broke even two years ago--are due to a variety of factors: the improved economy, the fact that these are the year’s only Olympics, the ratings and production success for CBS’ coverage of the 1992 Games (its first Olympics since 1960) and the continued trend of rising interest in the Winter Olympics in general, plus the Winter Olympics’ unique ability to draw certain hard-to-reach viewers.

“We have a significant amount of new money from advertisers who were in the Summer Olympics last time, but not the Winter Olympics,” Schweitzer said, citing as examples IBM, Xerox, Nestle, Lee Jeans and the John Hancock insurance firm. “We were able to get more money this year versus two years ago from less advertisers, (because the advertisers) are spending more money. Two years ago, we had to cut our prices dramatically to fill up the time. This year, we’re going to have more demand than time.”

Then there is the stand-alone nature of these Olympics, the first to benefit from an October, 1986, International Olympic Committee vote to place the Winter Olympics in the even-numbered year between the Summer Games, instead of holding them in the same year.

“To have the year’s one major sporting event gives you a big advantage in selling it,” said David Poltrack, the CBS Broadcast Group’s senior vice president for planning and research. “In 1992, there was confusion among some viewers when, during Christmas week, NBC was promoting its TripleCast and a lot of people thought the Winter Olympics were going to be on pay-per-view.”

Poltrack also pointed out that these Winter Olympics won’t have to compete with the so-called Dream Team of National Basketball Assn. stars who were to compete for the first time in the 1992 Summer Olympics, who were already being hyped in the weeks prior to the 1992 Winter Olympics.

As for the ratings for this year’s games, CBS has guaranteed advertisers it will average an 18.6 rating for its prime-time coverage, with each point representing 942,000 homes. (The guarantee was set about 18 months ago.)

The Winter Olympics are one of the few examples of television programming to record higher ratings in an environment of increasing choices that has led to falling ratings for nearly all other programming.

The 1984 Winter Games, carried by ABC and held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, averaged a 15 rating in prime time. The 1988 Games, carried live by ABC from Calgary, Canada had a 19.3. CBS’ coverage of the 1992 Games from Albertville, France averaged an 18.7. (The prime-time coverage of both the 1984 and 1992 games was seen on a delayed basis in the United States because of the time difference with Europe. Next month’s games, which will take place in Lillehammer, Norway, will also be carried on a delayed basis here.)

Figure skating has been the sport that has keyed the ratings increase. In the 1988 Games, the coverage of the long performances, featuring the duel between American Debi Thomas and eventual two-time gold medalist Katarina Witt of the former East Germany, received a 26.4 rating, the highest for a Saturday night program since the next-to-last night of ABC’s epic “Roots” miniseries 11 years earlier.

In 1992, the ladies long performance drew a 25 rating, the highest of the games, as Kristi Yamaguchi became the first American since Dorothy Hamill in 1976 to win the gold medal. (That telecast also included coverage of the U.S. hockey loss to players from the former Soviet Union.)

In 1992, the popularity of figure skating was also illustrated by the fact that the only night of the 16 that CBS did not win the prime-time ratings race during the Games came on one it did not have any figure skating to show.