When the Olympics were first televised worldwide in the 1960s, the set was much simpler, with no formal place for skaters to wait for their scores. A reporter and a camera operator would often catch them as they stepped off the ice.

At the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., the off-ice area was spruced up with foliage, producers said. By the 1984 Sarajevo Games, a formal area with a bench appeared. The 1988 Calgary Games unveiled a major set, with a designed backdrop and lights.

Though different producers have different recollections of the way the kiss-and-cry area got its name, the gist of it is that someone at a network said: ‘This is the place where the skaters kiss, this is the place where skaters cry. It’s the kiss-and-cry!” By the early ’90s, the name had stuck, said Doug Wilson, the longtime producer and director at ABC who orchestrated that network’s figure skating coverage for more than 40 years.

Image Shen Xue (left) and Zhao Hongbo of China after learning they won the gold in pairs in the Vancouver Games. Credit... Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

The opportunity to turn figure skating into theater was there for the taking, Wilson said.

“The value of the kiss-and-cry is basic: find out what the marks are,” he said. “But the real value is that you see these people with their guards down. It’s a very special time. Most people don’t think about it, but if you add up the total amount of airtime that the kiss-and-cry gets relative to the skating, it’s a large percentage.”

Clutching stuffed toys thrown to them from fans, some skaters look stunned. Some are deliriously happy, or at least pretend to be, as they wave awkwardly into the camera or say hello to people at home. Some use secret gestures to convey messages to friends and relatives. Others have learned to quietly grumble through clenched teeth, so they seem to be smiling.

Some talk to themselves. At the 1993 world championships in Prague, Nancy Kerrigan of the United States let her emotions loose after a poor free skate, saying she could not believe what happened  in a dozen different ways. She ended her soliloquy, “I want to die.”