Leaving Town Was an Option

Olympic fans hoping to stay in the dark over the results of the highly anticipated women’s figure skating competition until they could watch it on CBS Friday night had their hopes put on ice if they watched TV or listened to the radio beforehand.

Because of the time difference between Japan and the United States, broadcasters had the lowdown on the showdown between Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski in time for local and national morning news programs. Some of them warned viewers and listeners that they should tune out if they didn’t want to know, but others chose simply to blurt them out.

Even CBS, which generally has been keeping Olympic results under wraps until the network telecasts, got into the act.

CBS-owned radio stations KNX (1070) and KFWB (980) reported the outcome during the early-morning hours and into the afternoon, with announcers in most cases warning listeners beforehand. CBS-TV also reported the results throughout the day.

The network’s owned-and-operated local station, KCBS-TV Channel 2, informed viewers during news shows that Lipinski had scored an upset victory over Kwan.

Local news officials said it was unrealistic to expect that the results of the contest could remain unreported until they were shown on tape-delay, given the 17-hour difference between Southern California and the Nagano, Japan, site of the Winter Games. They also pointed to the high degree of interest in the Kwan-Lipinski showdown, particularly since Kwan is from Torrance and lives much of the time at Lake Arrowhead.

KTLA-TV Channel 5 “Morning News” weatherman Mark Kriski called out the results around 7 a.m., saying it was “a charade” to keep quiet about it.

“We’re just being a news program,” a KTLA spokeswoman said later. “It was not intended to be a ‘ha ha ha.’ We were just giving out information.”

ABC’s “Good Morning America” went into detail about the contest, showing still photos of Kwan and Lipinski while correspondent Liz Solters described how the skaters’ routines.

Said a “Good Morning America” spokesman: “We treated this as a news story. The Olympics is its own story, as it has been all along.”