LILLEHAMMER / ’94 WINTER OLYMPICS : MEDIA : CBS Will Not Allow Live TV of Kerrigan-Harding Show

Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding finally take to the ice today in the technical program of the women’s figure skating at the Winter Olympics, but there will be no live television coverage.

There will, however, be live radio coverage. Harding will skate eighth at about 10:40 a.m. PST, with Kerrigan skating 26th at about 1 p.m. PST, and CBS Radio (KNX in Los Angeles) will broadcast their performances live.

CBS Radio announced Tuesday that Paul Wylie, 1992 Olympic silver medalist, will provide analysis. Wylie is in Norway with CBS-TV, announcing short-track speedskating.

TNT’s weekday Olympic coverage runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the cable network will show some of the figure skating competitors, but not Kerrigan and Harding.

CBS, which paid $295 million for the rights to the Lillehammer Games, will embargo the Harding and Kerrigan routines. No television outlet will be able to show them until after CBS shows them on its prime-time show, which runs from 8 to 11 p.m.

Through the first 10 days, CBS has averaged a national Nielsen rating of nearly 26 for its prime-time telecasts. That compares with the previous record of 23.6 set by ABC at the 1980 Lake Placid Games, with the U.S. hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice.”

The CBS audiences have been as high as 78 million.

“I’m sure we’ll go over 100 million (viewers),” said Verne Lundquist, who will do play-by-play television coverage of the women’s figure-skating showdown. “There’s hope we might approach Super Bowl numbers.”

The free-skate portion of women’s figure skating is scheduled Friday. The skating order will be determined by today’s competition.