The TV ratings for the Salt Lake City Olympics were comparable to those for the last Winter Games staged in North America.

With a whopping 22.3 for Sunday’s closing ceremony tying the women’s figure skating short program for the third-highest rating of the 17 nights NBC finished with a 19.2 prime-time average.

The rating is 18 percent higher than the 1998 Nagano Olympics on CBS, the lowest-rated Winter Games in 30 years, and it almost equals the 19.3 for the 1988 Calgary Games on ABC.

That’s particularly impressive considering most network ratings not just for sports have fallen as cable has given viewers more choices of what to watch. ABC, NBC and CBS averaged a 14.0 prime-time rating in 1988 compared to 7.7 this season.

The top Winter Games average rating was the 27.8 for the 1994 Lillehamer Olympics, aka “The Nancy and Tonya Games.”

Each rating point represents 1 percent of U.S. television households, which currently translates to about 1.05 million homes.

An estimated 187 million people tuned in for at least six minutes of NBC’s coverage, surpassed in Winter Olympics history only by the 204 million for 1994.

The relatively high ratings enough to prevent the extra commercials that NBC and CBS were forced to air during the last two Olympics will have at least two practical effects:

l NBC, which says its profit from Salt Lake City will be $75 million, will have an easier job selling ad time during the 2004 Athens Olympics.

l The increased emphasis on showing events at the expense of features should remain part of the network’s strategy at the next three Olympics.

That represented a direct departure from NBC’s broadcasts of the 2000 Summer Games, which featured sappy features and tape-delayed coverage, and wound up as the lowest-rated Olympics since the 1960s.

NBC helped its cause by shortening the ratings sample on at least 11 nights, trimming the generally less-watched opening half-hour and/or closing portion of their shows.

The Salt Lake City Olympics topped the 20-rating plateau four times (opening and closing ceremonies, both nights of women’s figure skating). The 1998 Olympics had three such nights, the 1994 Olympics had 16, and the 1992 Albertville Olympics had six.