TORONTO -- It was only rock and roll, but perhaps they over-hyped it.

That hype left a lot of angry TV viewers in the wake of yesterday's SARS-Stock concert at Downsview.

Those viewers had faithfully followed the entire event to a logical conclusion only to discover that, in the end, hardly any performances were shown live.

Angry callers swamped the Sun switchboard last night.

The headlining Rolling Stones were all but blacked out until their last four songs, which were aired live. That was due to "artists' demands," according to sources close to the event.

In other words, blame Mick and the boys, not the networks.

And only a similar smattering of live coverage of other bands was shown during the previous 10 hours, because of those same "artists' demands."

What that meant was that MuchMoreMusic and the CBC were left holding the bag with a host of angry viewers who felt they'd been led to expect more than a mere sampling of the performance of the most high-profile band in the day-long celebration.

Up to its final hours, SARS-Stock had been marked by a veritable bonanza of seemingly unfettered local, national and international media attention.

In those final hours, however, instead of performances by the Stones, viewers got heavy doses of instant nostalgia as CBC and MuchMoreMusic relived their afternoon in the summer sun.

While MuchMoreMusic pushed the envelope with AC/DC clips, Newsworld's Jian Ghomeshi kicked it into high gear for a short-term retrospective of his day, giving us in the process a first fleeting glimpse of the Stones, live, in their pre-show chat with the media.

That was all just the prep for the perennial Ralph Benmurgi, who only seems to have been around as long as the Rolling Stones. He was charged, last night, with stickhandling CBC's prime-time coverage, which turned out to be yet another look back at the day that was, with a bit of Mick and the boys tacked on.

In fairness, it was a day many will recall for a long time. It was a day that dawned with the hope that Toronto could catch the eye of a SARS-weary world, and ended with the conviction that indeed we had. For that you can thank a media machine that flashed Toronto's clean bill of health across borders and around the world.

So what if the aforementioned "artists' restrictions" made it seem like we were suffering from a mild case of attention deficit disorder in the process? Thanks to the folks at CNN and the border channels, channel surfing became an international event for the day.

Throughout the day, if all you wanted was the lowdown on what was going down as it was actually going down, the place to park your dial proved to be CP24.

Despite a split-screen format that brings migraines to all but the most devoted multi-tasker, CP24 managed to steal a lot of thunder from its sister station, MuchMoreMusic, where throughout the afternoon the focus was more on what had happened and what was going to happen, than on what was in fact happening all around them.

CP24 seemed to capture the first glimpse, at 12:25 p.m., of a live performance on the massive Downsview stage. The network was also the first to air backstage post-show interviews, and the first to air a glimpse of the Stones live in performance.

Meanwhile, CTV Newsnet was doing a pretty impressive job as well, turning young Pat Tye from Kingston into a mini-media star as the first person in line, even while they overworked a tired line about how Western premiers, on hand to man the Downsview barbecues, were more accustomed to being grilled than grilling.

In the early stages, CBC's Newsworld dined on everyone else's dust, courtesy of lame cutaways to Ghomeshi, who enlightened with deep and meaningful predictions such as: "It's going to shed some light on Toronto as a really big diverse city of millions."