Turin, Italy — Olympic bronze medalist Angela Ruggiero grew up thinking of the Winter Games as the ultimate reality show.

The star was a grassroots, often unknown athlete striving for a medal and national celebrity.

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"I thought it would be so cool if I could do it too," the 26-year-old hockey player said.

Now her Olympics are regularly getting crushed in the TV ratings race by shows including "American Idol," where grassroots singers strive for viewers' votes to win a record contract.

"It's two different kinds of drama," said Ruggiero, who watches "Idol." "Every athlete here has dedicated their life to representing their country, and you have respect for other athletes whether you win or lose.

"Reality shows are spontaneous. You don't have to work like we do as athletes to get on one, and once you're there it's not like your life has been dedicated to your goal."

Results such as Wednesday's preliminary Nielsen ratings — twice as many viewers watched "Idol" as the Olympics — is a humbling reality for this generation of athletes. They've devoted years, energy and money chasing one American dream, only to see their peers prefer another narrative of fame.

Why? TV experts say these Olympics in particular appear crippled by predictability, and the winter sportsfest can't compete for viewers who want a say in who wins.

"The Olympics were once considered the ultimate reality show because they had little competition," noted Douglas Ferguson, communications professor at the College of Charleston and co-author of a textbook on media programming strategies. "The other networks rolled over and played dead, choosing shows that were either scripted or reruns."

Media has become more competitive, however, in the cable and Internet era.

Reality show 'competition'

Reality shows are all about competition, over a season of episodes, not just a few seconds of downhill skiing.

"They can build up your vested interest in each character, stretch out the action for maximum drama and leave you at the end of several weeks actually caring for these characters and breathlessly awaiting the outcome," said Robert Thompson, pop culture expert from Syracuse University.

In the Olympics, on the other hand, women's skating events play on Tuesday and Thursday. Then they're over. The Olympics, in fact, may need to take a leaf from the book of reality TV and learn to develop these stories, beyond the old "up close and personal" segments that have been the order of the day since the '70s. If the Olympics want to compete in the age of "American Idol," they're going to need a TV facelift that they haven't had in over 30 years.

This Olympics is hampered by the reality of losing.

The top skater, Michelle Kwan, withdrew before competing. The most touted skier, Bode Miller, bombed.

"This has been a uncommonly uninteresting Olympic Games, a situation I think caused as much by the Games themselves as the presentation by the broadcaster," said Rick Gentile, a Seton Hall professor who directed the CBS Winter Olympic broadcasts in 1994 and 1998.

"There has been no joy of victory, only apparent agony of defeat. The pre-hyped stars have not come through, and there's been no attempt to anoint new ones to take their place. We haven't been seduced into falling in love with those athletes, American or foreign, who have been successful. The [NBC] format has been, evidently, inscribed in granite and is unchangeable."

He directed a poll that showed 26 percent of Olympic viewers are less interested in these Games than in past ones.

"Put that next to the ratings decline of over 30 percent from Salt Lake City and over 25 percent from Nagano and you've got some former Olympic fans who are disgruntled," Gentile said. "So why not switch to 'American Idol,' or 'Grey's Anatomy' or whatever else is out there?"

Wednesday's ratings were so low that only one other Winter Olympics prime-time show was worse. The shows began in 1960.

Delay of game penalty

There's no drama if you already know the end of the story, and that's common with the time difference between the United States and Italy.

Medals are won in Italy six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, and most competitions are televised on tape later. That allows plenty of time to find the results on the Internet.

And catching the marquee athletes — the female figure skaters — usually means staying up after 11 p.m. in Atlanta.

"Reality shows, on the other hand, are unpredictable," said Patty Williamson, a professor at Central Michigan University who studies the genre.

"Perhaps some [viewers] find the excitement of the unknown outcome, however contrived it might be, more entertaining. Add to that formula the fact that reality television is edited for maximum drama and excitement, and you might find that younger viewers are more attracted to the more polished and fast-paced material.

"In contrast, the Olympic events are generally less contrived and are not edited to create a sense of false conflict, as are most reality shows. Certainly there are conflicts in the Olympic Games — all you had to do was watch the Italian ice dancers or listen to the barbs thrown between the male U.S. speedskaters to prove that — but they are not the focus of the events."

Judging at home

TV viewers flock to figure skating more than any other Olympic sport, and one thing it has in common with "Idol" is that both are judged.

The skating point system was arcane to viewers in the past, and the present system was unveiled for the first time in this Olympics after a cheating scandal in the 2002 Games.

Anyone can vote on "American Idol," and using any criteria.

American Idol "is even more subjective than figure skating, because it puts that subjectivity in the hands of viewers who aren't experts," said Andy Dehnart, a lecturer at Stetson University in Florida and publisher of realityblurred.com. "But that's what truly makes it stand apart: the show lets the audience participate in the story, and allows viewers' judgments to actually impact the show."

The appeal of underdog, self-sacrificing amateurs is draining from the Olympics, too. Professionals are not allowed on "Idol."

The 1980 Olympic "Miracle on Ice" hockey gold medal "was unknown college players vs. the Red Army," Ferguson said. "Now we get to watch pros lose out before the medal rounds."

NBC will judge its low ratings, too, and along with other networks rethink long-term, high-dollar broadcast rights contracts, predicted Alan Albarran, chairman of the radio, TV and film department at the University of North Texas.

NBC paid nearly $900 million for the broadcast rights to the next Games in Beijing in 2008. And if ratings end up below expectations, NBC may have to refund advertisers with free commercials, Albarran said.

The network has called its record 418-hour Olympic broadcast a success based not on TV ratings but on the Olympic "halo" over its Web site and cable offerings.

Computer users have visited nbcolympics.com 261 million times through Wednesday. They have watched 6.4 million video streams, representing more than 72,000 hours of video from the Games.

"We're in the viewership business — that's what we sell — and we are succeeding in increasing our viewers," NBC Universal president Randy Falco said in a statement this week.

A new American Dream

Ruggiero knows the seduction of both dreams, Olympic and Idol-ic.

She's one of 12 Olympians competing in an online contest to become a contestant on the sixth season of NBC's "The Apprentice." She's dueling bobsledder Todd Hays in the online voting that ends today at 9 p.m. EST on nbcolympics.com.

"It's really the perfect synergy between the Olympics and reality shows," said NBC senior vice president Craig Plestis, in charge of unscripted programming.

"We wanted A-type people, and Olympians are driven and they want to win. They want to battle in front of people who are rooting for them to win.

"'The Apprentice' is about getting that dream job in the way that the Olympics is like winning a medal. It's all intertwined."

Ruggiero expects that "The Apprentice" spin would show viewers someone that she's not, but that's OK. The 2002 silver medalist from Michigan is used to competing on TV and she'd love to win the show's first prize: a $250,000, one-year job working for mogul Donald Trump.

That would help her a lot, given this reality after chasing her amateur hockey dream: "I don't have a job after the Olympics."