Olympics on TV: With Simone Biles out, will you still watch?

A day after Simone Biles dropped out of the gymnastics team final at the Tokyo Olympics, the American superstar announced that she is also removing herself from Thursday’s all-around competition to focus on her mental well-being.

That loud blubbering you hear is coming from the folks at NBC, the network that paid billions for exclusive Olympics broadcast rights and had trumpeted Biles as this summer’s marquee attraction.

To fully grasp what a blow this is to the network, think of the Olympics as one big, ratings-dependent TV show (which it essentially is). Now imagine the show without its biggest star — “I Love Lucy” without Lucy … “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” without Mary …

OK, that’s dramatically oversimplifying things. The Olympics are obviously an ensemble piece, with a wealth of interesting “cast members” and intriguing stories — many of them taking place away from the main TV spotlight.

But coming into the Games, Biles was the focal point. The gymnastics GOAT. The ace in the hole. The 24-year-old woman anointed by NBC and many of its sponsors as the face of these Games. (One could argue that all that thunderous hype may have contributed to her mental stress).

Now she won’t be in action during Thursday’s all-around and she just might be done for good. (Biles hasn’t said whether she’ll compete in the individual apparatus finals, which begin next Monday).

And so the question becomes: Do you still care about these troubled, tumultuous Olympics? Will you even watch on Thursday as Team USA, now led by Suni Lee and Jade Carey, carries on without its anchor?

NBC has already experienced significant ratings declines from the 2016 Rio Games and it will be interesting to see how Thursday’s telecasts fare without Biles. Olympic TV audiences tend to be fickle and this could be a nightmare scenario for the network.

Ironically, before the Games began, Sam Fels, a writer for Deadspin.com, penned a short post insisting that Biles’ health would be pivotal to NBC’s Olympic ratings success.

“In wrestling terms, Biles means money,” he wrote. “She’s the one NBC executives are quivering about. She’s the one who would send everything into the toilet if she couldn’t compete.”

We’ll soon find out if that assessment proves correct. Will viewers, for the most part, remain interested in the Tokyo Games? Or are they ready to flush them all away?