What you missed because of that stupid car chase

When a car chase took over Kansas City airwaves right at 5:30 p.m., just as the network nightly newscasts were set to air, it could have meant the total pre-emption of the network offerings.

But thank God we live in the digital era, right? Now that the ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates in town all own a second TV station, and now that they have those nifty DTV signals that can be split into two, even three different channels, they could just shuffle that live helicopter chase over to another sector in the vast digital wonderland and continue with their regular broadcasts.

Right?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, not exactly. Despite being surrounded by 21st-century equipment, local stations chose a defiantly 20th-century solution to a classic news dilemma: Do we show this riveting, but otherwise completely meaningless, bit of live news video, or let people get the shows they tuned in for?

In the past, car chases have been covered by live streaming video, then summarized on the news later. Not sure why that discipline broke down tonight — after all, the people driving on the interstate, the people actually in harm's way when this nut came driving through the wrong way, couldn't watch Johnny Rowlands' copter video. Even if they could, shouldn't they be watching the road instead?

But that's OK. There weren't any stories on the pre-empted nightly newscasts that were of any interest to local viewers. Well, except this one.

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UPDATE: Manna from heaven! This video just in from our colleagues at America's Finest News Source....almost like they knew there was a stupid car chase going on and the local TV critic needed a little support from the federal level. Perfect!

NOTE: The video is NSFW. If you'd like to hear the safe-for-work sound bite I loved, click here.

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