From the late 1980s through the 1990s, skating could do no wrong — and even when it did wrong, it was right. It's been 14 years since Tonya Harding's live-in ex-husband and his strange group of friends attacked Nancy Kerrigan's knee and caused TV ratings to soar. The women's short program at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics remains the sixth-highest-rated TV show in history. This is not just sports shows, but all television shows, behind only the last episode of M*A*S*H, "Who Shot J.R.?" on Dallas, the finale of Roots and two Super Bowls.

Those were heady days in the land of the sequin, but they did not last.

After making $12 million a year with its old TV deal, U.S. Figure Skating is now receiving absolutely no rights fee with its new TV deal. There's no title sponsor for the 2008 U.S. national championships, no chance to scream at any individual judge's scores and no Michelle Kwan. New little jumping beans are supposed to interest us, but so far they haven't. The sport's relatively new points-based scoring system is fairer to the skaters but remains indecipherable to the viewing public. And perhaps worst of all, Tonya Harding absolutely refuses to make news anymore.

"I think having all these teenagers dominating women's skating is an issue," said Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic men's gold medalist. "Women who still are a majority of our demographic like to see other women competing for the top honors: Katarina Witt, Debi Thomas, Nancy Kerrigan, Michelle Kwan. They relate to them better. They appreciate them. They don't relate to the way the little girls skate. You don't get the same depth of skating with a teenager."

And many of the top teenagers — with the notable exception of Kwan, who dominated her sport for a decade into her 20s — don't stick around long enough to establish a relationship with today's personality-driven American sports fan.

"We need a household name, but the general public can't get to know our stars anymore because they're not stars long enough," said Audrey Weisiger, a top U.S. coach.

People like Boitano and Weisiger are not out to trash figure skating. On the contrary, they love it, and not only that, it's how they make their living. But they think one of the great mistakes made by their sport was initiating an anonymous judging system as a response to the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic judging scandal, doing away with the single most recognizable aspect of the sport: the 5.8's, 5.9's and 6.0's.

Figure skating was reality TV before there was reality TV. In the 6.0 system — the sport's brand — the countries of the nine judges and their scores for an individual skater were plastered on the TV screen. The skater sat in the perfectly named "Kiss and Cry" section, reacting as each judge's score was revealed. It was riveting, the kind of drama any sport would kill for today. How the people who run figure skating kept their jobs after getting rid of such a viewer magnet is one of the sports world's true mysteries.

"The 6.0 needs to come back," Boitano said. "People have to be able to root, they have to be able to understand the scoring system. Round up, add it up, multiply by something, do whatever it takes — but it all needs to get down to a number people know, either a 6.0 or a 10."

The sport also must once again identify the judges and their scores. "Transparency is essential, but the audience also needs to feel that it is participating, too," Weisiger said. "You used to be able to boo the judge from Bulgaria. Now the audience feels cheated. You can't have a good-guy, bad-guy feeling anymore. I kind of miss it myself."

Only in figure skating would you have this scenario: After the 2002 Olympic scandal in which the French judge — you remember her? — said she fixed the results in the pairs competition in a deal with the Russians, the sport decided to remedy the situation by giving the judges anonymity.

TV ratings have been in a free fall ever since. Whether there's a cause-and-effect at work here is anyone's guess, although it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world for the sport to at least consider that possibility before the last figure skating fan turns off the TV and leaves the room.