Our friends at KSDK Channel 5 found themselves in a no win situation yesterday afternoon.

The clock had struck 2. The Cardinals were getting underway against the hated Cubs in what is always an excellent local ratings draw.

An ocean away, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were walking back onto Centre Court, Wimbledon, after the second rain delay in their match. That match, today, is being hailed as the single greatest in the history of tennis.

Now, in KSDK's defense, the events at Wimbledon were unprecedented. I don't know that anyone would have imagined the match would go five sets. That two of the sets would go into what is essentially overtime. That there would be 2 and a half hours worth of rain delays nestled into the middle of all of this.

Also, St. Louis' NBC affiliate had shown the foresight to get the Cardinals to move the start time back an hour later than normal...just in case. The problem is, an hour later wasn't enough, and KSDK apparently had no plan B.

With both events going on simultaneously, channel 5 split the two events into what can only be described as a hastily prepared split screen. The picture of the Cardinals game was the larger of the two, and the audio from baseball was provided. If you wanted tennis, you had the little box and no sound. This is how St. Louisans watched the final set of the greatest tennis match ever played. Charlie Chaplain would have been proud.

The reaction has not been kind today. Over in Kansas City, the blog site at the K.C. Star is having plenty of fun with it. Back on this side of the state, our local paper is telling the tale, and providing a forum for viewers rants. Tennis fans also helped themselves to a few shots at the station on its own website.

My question is this: where was plan B? Where was it before the day ever began? Managers are paid the big bucks to expect the unexpected. Where was plan B at 1pm? About an hour before the Cardinals game started, it was clear that the match might go five sets, and there might be more rain. Was there any discussion then?

Personally, I can think of a few of things they could have tried. First, for the folks who have HDTV and can get it over the air, Channel 5 has a second signal, channel 5.2, where they play weather non-stop. Shifting the NBC Tennis feed over there wouldn't have helped a huge number of people, but it would have cost nothing and been a start. (They didn't do this. I checked.) Secondly, is there not a relationship with Charter that would have allowed for the use of a public access channel or something? I have to believe there's someone who could have called someone else and gotten this done fairly quickly. Third, did anyone consider streaming it on the website and telling fans to go there?

The easy shot is to say they should have given the tennis priority, then switched over to the Cardinals. That's not quite fair. I guarantee you, many more people were interested in the Cardinals than in Wimbledon around here. 100 angry tennis calls would have translated into thousands of irate baseball fans had they gone the other way with this.

I think the guy I felt the worst for in reading the accounts today was KSDK's news director, Mike Shipley. He was the one offered up to the newspaper to explain the decision. The funny thing is, in fifteen years of working in newsrooms, that was never a decision I saw a news director asked to make. (Yea or nea on weather cut ins? Yes. Sports programming decisions? No.) I don't know if Shipley made the call yesterday or not, but the fact of the matter is, he shouldn't have been in the position of making that decision or answering for it.

That's the job of the general manager, or the program director, one or both of whom dropped the ball Sunday afternoon.