LILLEHAMMER, Norway— In the Winter Olympics city of 1994, where Garrison Keillor would find that the men are strong, the women are good-looking and the children are cross-country skiers by age 3, the pressure is building on CBS to equal its highly rated performance in Albertville, France, in 1992.

"Expectations were fairly low for us the last time, but the viewers never left us," Mark Harrington, vice president of Olympics for CBS Sports, said of the 18.7 prime-time Nielsen rating Albertville received, exceeding the 17.0 expected and blunting industrywide skepticism. "Now the bar is higher."

Indications are that CBS is ahead of where it was two years ago, partly because of the gjennomfort, or thoroughness, of the Norwegians, and to the experience the network got in Albertville. Making CBS hearts warm is the comfort of knowing that as long as figure skating exists, all will be well.

CBS won the prime-time ratings 15 of the 16 nights from Albertville; 10 of those nights featured figure skating.

"In each area of figure skating, there are returning gold medalists," said Rick Gentile, CBS's senior vice president of production. "People will be able to say 'I want to see Brian Boitano or Katarina Witt.' Figure skating alone can carry us. And then we have the other stuff to throw in."

American audiences adore figure skating above all that other stuff: skiing, speed skating, biathlon, cross-country skiing, bobsled and luge. Yet the irony for these Olympics is that the sport is almost anathema to Norwegians.

"Figure skating has never been for the commoners, but something more exclusive," said Jarle Hoeysaeter, the Lillehammer's organizing group's vice president of broadcasting.

Last week at the figure-skating arena in Hamar, maybe 150 people attended the Piruetten 1993 competition at the new 6,000-seat arena. Nancy Kerrigan, the 1992 Olympic silver medalist, finished second that afternoon in the technical program. That evening, the Russian pairs team of Natalya Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriyev, and the Canadian team of Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, skated in near silence for a CBS telecast that ran Saturday.

"We needed a laugh track," said a tuxedoed Verne Lundquist, who called the competition with Scott Hamilton and Tracy Wilson. "It was tough to do."

In the stands, CBS's Jim Nantz munched on microwave popcorn and said: "Worst purchase of the day: preferred parking for Piruetten."

CBS AND THE POWER OF MONEY CBS is spending 10 percent less to produce the Lillehammer telecasts than it laid out in Albertville, but its $300 million bid to acquire the rights to the Norway Games, which begin Feb. 12, exceeds by $57 million what it spent for Albertville. A script for the Lillehammer Olympic Organizing Committee's solvency could not have been better written by Henrik Ibsen. About $200 million of CBS's money goes directly to the committee, accounting for half the revenue it is raising (another $800 million for construction and other costs is coming from the Norwegian Government). The rest of the world is throwing small change at Lillehammer: $27 million from the European Broadcast Union, about $12 million each from Japan and Canada and $2.5 million from China.

WHAT, NO BUBBLE PEOPLE? Albertville's opening ceremony was notable for being inexplicable (how can we forget those cymbals-crashing human mobiles and the bubble people?) to TV audiences. CBS won't say what will be in Lillehammer's pageant, but Sandy Grossman, who will direct it for CBS, said: "They took some of the wackiness out of the original plan because of money and what they have isn't crazy." Harrington vowed: "There will be trolls."

PREPARE FOR THE BLITZ Thanksgiving will begin CBS's onslaught of promotions to remind America that Lillehammer is on the horizon. "Our job is to get people to the set that first night," said George Schweitzer, CBS's senior vice president of marketing. Count on a daily diet of trolls (traditional and ugly Norwegian totems), Norwegian history, and well-known athletes in the spots. A producer recently left a message on Schweitzer's voice mail that said she had to rush, "because there were a bunch of Vikings waiting in the lobby."

AND THE WINNER OF THE MOOSE LUGE IS. . . . There are enough loose moose in Norway to believe the rumor that one of them took a turn on the year-old luge and bobsled course in Hunderfossen. But athletic old Bullwinkle would not have had the benefit of TV coverage, which will combine the BBC's 29 cameras with a few of CBS's. One BBC cameraman in a tower above curve the No. 6 will be strapped into a harness so he doesn't fall as he pans quickly to catch the crucial action.