‘WEST 57TH’--TV’S HIP ADDRESS

Newsdance.

They’re young. They’re beautiful. They’re hip.

They move. They groove. They rip.

They’re action. They’re traction. They’re pure satisfaction.

Don’t give them any lip.

See them striding side by side down a crowded Manhattan street with fun and determination on their faces. See them hustling and bustling behind the scenes, a sense of urgency in their voices, high-tech music in their ears.

They’re the news maniacs from “West 57th,” the CBS magazine series that premiered Tuesday night. One awed critic--no doubt a mover and groover himself--euphorically labeled “West 57th” the TV news of the future. I take that as a threat.

“Where on earth is West 57th?” asks the ad promoting this show. There’s a more relevant question: Where on earth is CBS News?

Meet Jane Wallace. She covered Central America. Meet Bob Sirott. He covered Chicago. Meet Meredith Vieira. She covered politics. Meet John Ferrugia. He covered the White House, and even better, he wears suspenders and argyle socks.

They and executive producer Andrew Lack collaborated on an hour that sagged more than Ferrugia’s trousers.

“West 57th” airs at 10 p.m. occasionally opposite the now- monthly “American Almanac,” NBC’s new Roger Mudd-anchored news magazine that premiered the previous week in a blur of blahs. The centerpiece of “American Almanac” was a lackluster story on surviving crew members of the atom-bomb-dropping Enola Gay.

Surviving “American Almanac” was a struggle. I fell asleep during a story on husband-and-wife truckers and didn’t see the rest of the hour. “How did it end?” I later asked a colleague who said she saw the show. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I fell asleep.”

Based on first samplings, though, I’d take stiff and fuddy “American Almanac” over finger-snapping “West 57th,” which is named for the address of CBS News in Manhattan. “West 57th” is the “Flashdance” of TV news, an extension of the kind of local newscast that is heavy on the smoke and forced energy.

The premiere was carried off with penetrating superficiality. CBS seems to be using this show to give Wallace and Vieira the experience in shallowness they lacked last year in unsuccessfully battling Phyllis George for the co-anchor job on “The CBS Morning News.”

Sirott’s soft and gratuitously violent opening piece on movie tough guy Chuck Norris exploited violence under the guise of reporting about it and included no rebuttals of Norris’ rough-’em-up style. Really moved, though.

Shannon Ryan, the daughter of California Congressman Leo Ryan, who was killed in Jonestown in 1978, is a resident of controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s Oregon compound. That well-reported story was reported again Tuesday by Jane Wallace.

Ferrugia’s piece on the plight of battered women was interesting but incomplete. Time to move on. Vieira went to Ethiopia to report on the progress of USA for Africa and seemed to conclude that the aid is alleviating some of the hunger but not much of it and that she felt bad about that but couldn’t do much about it and look at the dust out there and look at the flies on those faces and isn’t it terrible that we can’t do anything about it and start the music already.

My favorite though, was Wallace’s witless, pointless piece following the progress of the heart of the late Jon-Erik Hexum, who willed his body to science. His heart is now beating in the body of a man who sort of wants to meet Hexum’s family but they don’t wanna meet him just bcause they don’t wanna. “Every heartbeat,” Wallace reported, “is a reminder to Michael that his heart beats for Jon-Erik.” Oh brother. Is this an in-depth series? Do we tune in next week for an update on Hexum’s other organs?

One of the really striking things about the “West 57th” opener was its homogenization of good people, blending them into mass triviality. Another was the lack of topicality, despite all the fuss about immediacy. These were essentially old stories dressed up in Madonna clothes. Isn’t there a statute of limitations on news?

It’s almost a given now that anyone who criticizes “West 57th” will be immediately designated as hopelessly geriatric or out of touch. You wear a pacemaker and prefer John Cameron Swayze. You live in the musty past. You don’t understand that prime time has passed by such dinosaurs as Charles Kuralt and Bill Moyers, whose own fleeting magazine series were not deemed sufficiently popular or hip or young enough by CBS to remain on the air.

Well, I’m 43, and “West 57th” and its newsketeers are definitely too young for me. My daughter is 16, and I have a hunch they’re too young for her too. That’s because there is only one way to describe this series.

M-I-C.

See ya real soon.

K-E-Y.

Sure hope not.

M-O-U-S-E.