CBS News doesn’t quite have the hang of this “on line” thing

CBS News hosted the latest Republican presidential candidate debate on Saturday, the 5 billionth of this election cycle, and it looks like they kind of blew it. Affiliates carried the first part of the debate while the second was to be online only. The servers weren’t ready for the traffic, rendering the feed crashy and unreliable, which made the last part of the debate unwatchable. There was also confusion among stations in South Carolina (where the debate took place) over whether they would get the full feed or not and there was a lot of grumbling by the less popular candidates that they didn’t get enough airtime. This broadcast/online hybrid thing is tricky, it turns out.