`IT'S TOO EASY TO RIP US'; CBS SURPRISED BY FUSS ABOUT TAPED GAMES.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

Go figure.

The women's figure skating portion of the '98 Winter Games from Nagano comes on, and the flurry of complaints about CBS' Tape-Delayed Big Lie finally seems to begin drifting away.

It's because it happens every Olympics.

``I'll grant you this is all on tape-delay and that people like to see things at different times - that's never going away - but take that out of the argument and no one here is doing a bad job,'' said CBS Sports spokesperson Leslie Ann Wade from the network's Nagano command post.

Wade and her CBS cohorts haven't run away to hide as NBC did when its tape-delayed '96 Summer Games from Atlanta were handled in much the same way - prepackaged, American-slanted, commercial-clogged, feature-heavy formula with news sprinkled in despite it being in the East Coast-friendly time zone.

But CBS folks admit they're a bit shellshocked at the reaction to something that so many seem to be watching - it's the top-rated show every night - just for the sake of having something to gripe about.

Especially since this is the way the Olympics, both Summer and Winter, have been presented to the American people for the last 30 years.

``It's too easy to rip us right now,'' said Wade. ``In our minds, we remember ABC doing the Winter Olympics long ago and somehow we remember how beautiful and perfect it was. But it was nothing like that. It was all on tape, too. We didn't invent the tape-delay. And critics complained about them - they even complained about Jim McKay.

``We have this revisionist history or something. Maybe we were less jaded back then. Maybe we were less sophisticated. But we used to embrace it.

``The same thing happened to CBS when it did the Games from Lillehammer four years ago. But then, once the figure skating started, all the attention turned to what was happening in the women's figure skating and the story changed to how incredible the size of the TV audience was.''

You can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself.

So guess what: We'll always feel manipulated as long as we live with these technical advancements. Maybe 30 years ago there was no cable, but in these times, when ESPN ``SportsCenter'' spits out the results as soon as it can because that's its job, CBS' coverage looks like it's lagging.

We tend to expect so much from TV, and we get a lot of our information from TV, that when the two don't quite line up - in this case, CBS' Olympics coverage - we feel betrayed.

``If we had this programming on right now and we didn't call it `The Olympics,' people would be tuning to CBS and saying, `This event is pretty interesting,' and we'd be a critical success,'' Wade continued. ``The production has been unbelievable. If any TV series got these ratings, network people would be high-fiving themselves to death. It's the nature of television and this has all been turned inside out.''

WEATHERING THE STORM, PART II

So there's no way CBS could send the non-Eastern portion of these United States a feed that would at least give us something close to a live sporting event?

Wade says an entirely new crew of CBS people would have to be hired to build two prime-time shows nightly, and it's logistically time-consuming enough just to do the one American feed.

Events in Nagano have taken place from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., giving the Pacific time zone a live window of 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Somewhere in there is prime time, right?

The women's figure skating finals took place from 8 to 11 p.m. in Japan Friday, or 3 to 6 a.m. Pacific time. Which means today's newspaper has no news about Michelle Kwan's pursuit of a gold medal. Radio and the Internet will have it. TV news can also report it without the video.

CBS will take at least two of its three prime-time hours tonight to show it in its edited form when it has its captive audience.So all those people in Los Angeles who'd love to be up at 3 a.m. watching the local girl Kwan do her possible gold-medal-winning performance are out of luck with no pay-per-view.

``I think we are closer to having taped coverage of the Olympics for the rest of our lifetime than we are to having pay-per-view again,'' said Wade.

LET'S REMEMBER CARAY'S GLORY DAYS

``I always figured I'd drop dead at the ballpark someday, yelling, `Cubs win! Cubs win!' with my last breath,'' wrote Harry Caray in the opening chapter of his 1989 autobiography ``Holy Cow!'' when talking about the stroke he suffered a year earlier. ``I certainly didn't know what to make of this stroke business.''

Maybe the thing he should have made of it was that it was a sign to retire. But he didn't. The Cubs' Hall of Fame play-by-play man went nearly 10 more years before dying Wednesday at the age believed to be 77. The tribute shows have already started, including a Roy Firestone-hosted special tonight at 9 on ESPN.

I'd hate to remember Harry Caray just for his last decade on WGN, when his memory had faded, his voice slurred, and things he said were far from politically correct. His comments on a Cubs-Dodgers broadcast several years about Hideo Nomo were downright ignorant. But that's the lasting impression.

You'd like any criticism to be based on what the person did, not on what he couldn't do anymore.

Again from his book:

``The media has been good to me. But every so often, a columnist in one of the road cities will write that I'm a homer. This is about the poorest description I can possibly think of. I am not a homer. Never have been. Never will be. . . .

``When I'm at that ballpark broadcasting a game, I'm the eyes and ears for that fan at home. If I don't tell the truth. . . . he or she isn't going to hear it. And the fan deserves to hear it.''

He ended his book with the line: ``I am, after all, a fan.''

That's for sure.

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

More than 5,000 turned up at the Forum last Sunday to watch the ``Winter Break'' live telecast of the U.S.-Canada Olympic hockey game on the videoboard. KingsCare Charity was the big winner, receiving about $50,000 from the event. Canada's victory came on and off the ice. The biggest cheer from the crowd came 10 minutes into the broadcast when the Forum feed was switched from CBS to the Canadian Broadcasting Company coverage, thankfully extinguishing the voice of Sean ``Beantown Classic'' McDonough.

Viewer reaction to the Winter Olympics at the ``Talkback'' room on KCBS Channel 2's Web site (www.cbs2.com or www.channel2000.com). You'd think these Games are more disgusting than any filthy restaurant that the ``Eye Team'' has tried to expose.

Try AM 1150 on the car radio today at points around the city where it disappears. The power boost from 5,000 to 50,000 watts should be completed this afternoon, and at night it'll go to 24,000 watts and gradually move up to 50,000 soon, the station says.

WHAT CHOKES

Olympic TV icon Jim McKay has been doing radio spots for McDonald's during the Games. Yes, the man who once told the world that ``they're all gone'' at the '72 Munich games is touting the two Egg McMuffins-for-$2 special.

Can Scott Hamilton (his real name) squeal any louder?

At Fox Sports Net, it's the blond leading the blond. Anchor Alan Massengale has become disposable - his contract wasn't renewed - after the recent hiring of another fair-haired boy, Brad Goode, from KCBS Channel 2.

Ten years after Kirk Gibson did the impossible, the improbable has happened. He's been recruited as an analyst on Tigers games for Fox Sports Detroit.

We, the media of Los Angeles, offer a formal apology to former UCLA basketball Jelani McCoy, who has been run out of town by our intense scrutiny. Mellow out, kid.

By Tom Hoffarth

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