Are You Kidding Me?

So I open my morning Chronicle today to read that somehow, we're the bad guys for doing our jobs.

Not a new complaint about the news media, of course, but this time, the gripe is that we aired Olympics results before NBC got around to showing them. The Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub suggests we were out to ruin everyone's fun.

Uh, Peter, seems to me it was NBC that did the Grinching. When Usain Bolt ran his stunning 200 meters the other day, The Peacock Network sat on the video for something like 15 hours. In Internet time, that's roughly 37 years. Anyone with an Internet connection could see the video long before Bob Costas & Co. got around to sandwiching it in among all the diving events.

If anybody needs chiding for how it handled Olympics news, it's not KCBS. Consider that NBC had not one, or two, or three, but five networks at its disposal (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, and Telemundo). NBC could have shown everything right down to the always-gripping small-bore rifle competition live, and still packaged the highlights for prime time.

Hey, I'd hate to be in NBC's position, too. You pay an insane sum of money to broadcast the Olympics, and you want to have full control. But here's a memo to the Peacock: times have changed. I can get results on my cell phone.

Or on KCBS.