Medal events in store on ‘Olympics’

The XX Olympic Winter Games (8 p.m., NBC) continues. Scheduled events include the figure-skating champions gala, alpine skiing (the women’s giant slalom gold medal final), four-man bobsled and the men’s 10,000 meter gold medal speed-skating event.

Over the course of the games, much has been made of the fact that the Games have failed to capture a dominant TV audience. “American Idol” and, to a lesser extent, “Dancing with the Stars” received far higher ratings than the Turin games.

Earlier this week, NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol attempted to put these perceptions into some context.

He acknowledged that the Winter Olympic ratings were down between 20 percent and 25 percent from the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, the last time they were held in a foreign venue in a very different time zone. But ratings for virtually all sporting events and TV spectacles have declined since 1998.

NBC clearly invested too much in the stories of Bode Miller and Michelle Kwan. But, as a sports fan, you have to love it when games fail to follow a predictable script. That’s what makes sports, and the Olympics in particular, the best reality television of all.

And the broadcast’s dependence on American “stars” was simply not in the spirit of the Games. In the past, Olympic broadcasts have made household stars of the most interesting, accomplished and colorful athletes, regardless of nationality.

I wonder what great stories we’ve missed as NBC focused so much attention on the shenanigans in Miller’s mobile home?

Other highlights

Even the dead find their birth mothers on “Ghost Whisperer” (8 p.m., CBS).

The first lady asserts herself during a two-hour “24” (8 p.m., Fox).

Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins star in the 1991 horror film “The Silence of the Lambs” (8 p.m., AMC), directed by Jonathan Demme.

Darwyn advises a youngster to stay away from suspected terrorists on a repeat of “Sleeper Cell” (9 p.m., Showtime).

A major hitch in a hit-and-run case on “Close to Home” (9 p.m., CBS).

The new cartoon “My Gym Partner Is a Monkey” (9 p.m., Cartoon Network) features the voices of Tom Kenny (“SpongeBob SquarePants”) and Brian Doyle Murray (“Groundhog Day”).

Suspicious static during an anti-terror drill points to sabotage on “Numb3rs” (10 p.m., CBS).

Scheduled on “20/20” (10 p.m., ABC): inside “Dancing with the Stars.”

A trip to the Big Apple on “Monk” (10 p.m., USA).

The birth of a new breed on “Battlestar Galactica” (10 p.m., Sci Fi).