KFMB TRIES NEW NIGHTLY NEWS ANGLE

With a flash of computer-generated graphics and a soft, feature-oriented format, KFMB-TV has launched an innovative--and for some, disturbing--late night news show.

Combining these elements with a youthful crew of its regular broadcasters, San Diego’s top-rated news station has redesigned its 11 p.m. newscast--with a regular ratings “sweep” less than a month away.

Titled “This Day,” the newly formatted newscast was launched Jan. 13. “We like to consider ourselves the leader,” Channel 8 executive news director Jim Holtzman said. “It was time to try something new . . . try something a little innovative.”

Holtzman and the newscast’s executive producer, Terry Wood-Timoney, developed the idea for the new-looking program a couple of months ago. The problem was that the late night news looked the same everywhere. They wanted something new and different, “kind of unpredictable.”

“In the past, 11 o’clock newscasts have had a set format. They try to shoehorn people into that format,” Holtzman said. So the station designed a format around “four of our very best reporters.” Instead of two co-anchors and two reporters, “This Day” uses four people functioning as anchor-reporters. The weather as a major segment was dropped. Marty Levin was replaced. He’s now on the noon and 5 p.m. newscasts.

Susan Lichtman, Hal Clement and Loren Nancarrow were pulled in, joining Dawn Fratangello as the new team. Holtzman has tried to get away from specialists for the late night news, assembling what he believes is a highly versatile team of reporters. Weather is minimized but if it’s a big news story, Holtzman said, his people will cover it.

There are no star anchors. “This Day” may be the advent of ensemble newscasting, in which the creators hope information and not the medium will be the message. The emphasis is away from a hard-news format. Viewers get a late-night roundup of the day’s events, characterized by a softer, more human ambiance. For a 30-minute broadcast, the major news stories on “This Day” tend to be longer, although shorter than those on hourlong news shows.

There are talk-back portions and a weekly segment with Steve Kelly, the San Diego Union’s political cartoonist.

“We let people be the focus,” Wood-Timoney said. “We wanted to involve theatrical lighting and a warm night feeling” in showing how the community is affected by the news of the day and to somehow put it all into perspective.

One of the biggest changes is the weather. Clark Anthony is gone. Instead of two minutes and 40 seconds using local and national maps, we get 40 seconds or less of the bare-bones forecast.

Then there’s that new set with a table for four downstage, a “Special Report” desk upstage and a separate interview desk. Visually, there’s an interesting blend of jazzed-up graphics--a shimmering nighttime seascape along with a computer-created moon and palm tree--plus the warmer approach to the day’s news.

The content and style of the show are definitely changed from the traditional hard-news format. Rather than just report the news for the bigger stories, an anchor-reporter on “This Day” is likely to seek a response to the story in the community. On Friday, when all charges against five of the seven defendants in the McMartin child molestation case in Los Angeles were dropped, Lichtman reported the story, moving from the shock and anger of the parents to interviews with the director of a child relocation center and Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy for their opinions about the result of the court’s findings.

Other segments on that program, in addition to local and national news highlights, included a science report on human guinea pigs by Fratangello, a subject from which she failed to pull any unreported matter.

In the absence of vacationing super sportscaster Ted Leitner, Clement credibly reported the sports. Nancarrow prepped the next day’s off-the-wall events, including a carrot festival and Pooh Day festivities. A 20-second weather report and a light piece tied to a local art gallery exhibit on the revival of interest in cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny completed the program as Nancarrow put a wrap on it all, pulling together the divergent skeins of a slain deputy trainee’s memorial service, the McMartin revelations and the renewed interest in those old cartoon characters.

“It’s a producer’s show,” Lichtman said, in which the newscasters nevertheless were asked for their input in its creation. “It’s a melding of four personalities. It’s taken us a little time to get used to each other. Traditionally, one of the anchors has more of the lead, more of a presence.” In the new format, she did not feel “a sense of competition.”

“We’re not here to do the nightly rape, murder, fire stories,” she said.

The headlines are covered in 90-second wrap, leaving the anchor-reporters the chance to spend “more time on how that impacts folks,” Lichtman said.

The high-tech graphics lend the show a contemporary, urban look, but are used less in the stories. “If there’s a shift in the economy, instead of using graphs and bars, we’ll go to the Johnsons’ house and show what it will mean to that family,” he said.

With the new set, a highly theatrical use of lighting to shift focus and the snazzy graphics, “This Day” has brought quick viewer response, most of it negative, according to Holtzman. Viewers develop personal attachments to newscasts, he said, “but we’ve made a lot of changes in the past. It may take a while for the viewers to catch up.”

“We’re into viewer shock,” joked Wood-Timoney, who worked for six to eight weeks on developing the new format. She characterized the reluctance of viewers to accept the unfamiliar as natural. The set, in particular, has drawn its share of criticism. “People here have said, ‘Is that the Kitty Hawk?’ But there’s always room for change. I don’t think you could do that in New York or Philadelphia,” she said.

She and Holtzman believe the show will make it on the content as well as its youthful high-tech look. “We want to get away from ‘I’m Dawn Fratangello,’ and ‘I’m Hal Clement’ and let the subject be the focus,” Wood-Timoney said.

With its plethora of desks that demand quick cuts with the cameras, the new show does go by fast. And although the graphics are high tech, there’s a softness, a rounding of edges to the visuals that fits with the show’s mellow musical score, reminiscent of Channel 10’s late-night movie theme.

And about those ratings that are around the corner. . . . “We’re trying to do things that haven’t been done before, and do them differently,” Clement said. “Management is real supportive. Ratings are booked in February. I don’t think anybody expects we’ll emerge as the dominant newscast in history. It will take time for the audience to get comfortable with it.”