KCOP ‘Top Story’ Is Forging News Image of Its Very Own

The Channel 13 news has an image problem. The problem is that it doesn’t have an image.

To get one, to become a major player in the local news game, KCOP’s news director says, the station has been willing to take a few chances.

The latest follows in the tradition of “Nightline” and “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour”: Channel 13 has been airing a longish segment of news and live interviews on a single subject during its nightly newscast. Anchored by longtime L.A. reporter Larry Attebery, KCOP’s “Top Story” presents 7-10 minutes of talk about “the hot topic” of the day--seemingly a brave departure from the prevailing local news taboo against giving the audience more than 100 seconds on any one topic at any one time.

“There are seven stations in this city, all with active news efforts, trying to develop their piece of the pie,” says Ed Coghlan, KCOP’s news director. “Most of the stations in town don’t have an identity. Channel 7 has a reputation (for a fast, sexy style of news) and Channel 5 has the old-line L. A. identity. The rest of us are out there trying to find what we want to do.

“Our job now is to differentiate ourselves from the pack so that the audience understands that there is a seventh news product in town. And our primary wrinkle in executing that at this point is giving the viewer the day’s top story in depth and trying to answer some of the basic questions that television news doesn’t often answer: the whys and ‘what next?’ behind the headline.”

Since premiering last February, KCOP’s “Top Story” has tackled such subjects as gangs, televangelists, how local Panamanians feel about the crisis in Panama, the state of TV news, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., car insurance, the controversy over “Colors,” astrology in the White House and, on the night the Lakers beat Detroit for the NBA championship, the psychology of the sports fan.

Attebery generally sets the story up with a short video piece and tising community,” Frank says. “Some advertisers only want to buy news. They think that’s the best environment for their product. News creates a station’s overall image and some people will put more of their advertising money in toto on stations that have the strongest newscast.”

In the last four years, Frank says, the station’s news budget has tripled (he won’t provide exact figures), though Coghlan insists he still has the smallest news staff of any station in town. In 1985, KCOP hired two young, unknown anchors, Tim Malloy and Wendy Rutledge, and though their audience at first was minuscule, the station has stuck with them. The following year KCOP expanded to an hour of local news five nights a week, and perhaps by next year, Frank says, Channel 13 news will expand to the weekends as well.

“Our ultimate goal is to be No. 1 in news at 10 p.m.” Frank says, “but I’m a realist and I know that’s not going to happen overnight. You can’t just go into a market and immediately get ratings in news. It’s not like buying a syndicated product such as ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ which will get high numbers no matter what station it’s on. People watch programs and not stations when it comes to entertainment.

“In news, people watch more for the personalities and the anchors that they’ve been watching for a long time. It’s very hard to change their habits. You have to change their mind-set and build up a familiarity over time until the viewer becomes more and more used to your newsperson coming into their living room or their bed.”

KTLA-TV Channel 5, with veteran anchorman Hal Fishman and nearly a 40-year heritage in local news, has dominated the independent news ratings race for many years. In the May sweeps, KTLA continued to hold a commanding lead with a 6.1 rating at 10 p.m. (Each rating point represents 46,527 households). KTTV, which has spent heavily in the past six months on multimedia promotions and high-priced anchors, came in second with a 3.8 average for its half-hour newscast, while KCOP trailed with a 3.5 rating for its hour of news.

While those numbers by themselves don’t look so hot, KCOP management is ecstatic. It wasn’t more than a couple years ago, they remember, that the station’s newscast was pulling in 1 ratings.

That improvement buoys Coghlan’s belief that it is only a matter of time before Channel 13 overtakes Fishman and Channel 5. He concedes that it probably won’t happen for another couple of years, but as Rutledge and Malloy grow and become more recognizable to the local audience and the station continues “to break local news tradition” with innovations such as “Top Story,” Coghlan insists that his “scrappy, over-achieving news operation will come out the winner.”

“Channel 5 has a 40-year heritage in the news business; we have a four-year heritage,” Coghlan says. “We used to say, ‘Give us $22 and we’ll give you the world.’ Now we’ve finally climbed into the ring. We can wade in there with the best of them. Channel 5 has won for a very long time, but we now can offer an alternative to their slow, leisurely approach and their one dominant anchor. There’s no doubt that we are going to make our presence felt in this city.”