2 New Television Newspapers Start Out Poles Apart

You might call them antithetical newspapers of the air, for “World Monitor” and “USA Today: The Television Show” are as different from each other as the publications that launched them.

Both weekday half hours premiered Monday, occupying opposite ends of the news pole.

Whereas “World Monitor” projects the same refreshingly thoughtful tone at 4 p.m. on cable’s Discovery Channel as its quality parent, the Christian Science Monitor, does in print, “USA Today: The Television Show” is so utterly dumb that it makes brief and breezy USA Today the newspaper look like “The History of Calculus and Its Conceptual Development.”

Airing at 7 p.m. on KCBS-TV Channel 2 (in place of a half hour of local news) and appropriately preceding a new version of “The Gong Show,” “USA Today: The Television Show” is designed for mental shut-ins.

If your mind has never left the house, this is for you. If you wish “Entertainment Tonight” used simpler words, this is for you. If you wish the National Enquirer had more pictures, this is for you. If you’re mad at the Dodgers for not scoring more touchdowns, this is for you.

There are no TV commandments outlawing triviality or mandating that this program be just another straight newscast. Its purpose is to complement existing news programs, not supersede them. Nonetheless, viewers are entitled to something more interesting and less flimsy than this.

Judging by the premiere, “USA Today” is tainment --infotainment minus the info. It doesn’t fill a void, it is one.

It’s a co-production of GTG, the company formed by Gannett and former NBC Chairman Grant Tinker, who lured Steve Friedman from NBC’s successful “Today” show to be executive producer of the syndicated half hour (an hour on weekends).

Much like the newspaper whose name it bears and promotes, the series is split into four sections: “USA,” anchored by Edie Magnus; “Life,” anchored by Robin Young; “Money,” anchored by Kenneth Walker; and “Sports,” anchored by Bill Macatee--all of whom glide from giant screen to giant screen across the show’s high-tech, high-gloss set.

Unike the newspaper, however, “USA Today: The Television Show” offers only the barest sense of what’s happening. Promising “the stories behind tomorrow’s headlines,” it instead delivers the headlines behind tomorrow’s stories.

One by one:

Walker, a capable correspondent when he was with ABC News, opened Monday with the “Scam of the Month”--a scant, ambiguous report on so-called gold investments, containing as much investigation as you can pack into 90 seconds.

A two-minute report on giant keyboards that you can walk across, like the one in the movie “Big,” was followed by a close-up look at the first 48 hours in the reign of the new Miss America, which “USA Today: The Television Show” boiled down to 30 seconds. That left only 47 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds uncovered.

There was a minute or so on Paul Simon and other pop/rock stars fighting poverty. Then came “Cover Story:” Three minutes on “Love and Romance,” in which anchor Young wondered, “What is this thing called love?”

As you watched this glorified sweeps minidoc segment that gave vapid a bad name, the more relevant question seemed to be: What is this thing called hate?

Macatee was given three minutes for several sports features. One was the umpteenth interview with The Boz--Seattle Seahawk Brian Bosworth, the most overcovered, over-heeded athlete this side of Mike Tyson. The Boz said he was misunderstood.

Another piece, on Soviet baseball, had wonderful potential, but was terminated at 45 seconds, just in time--whew, that was close--to avoid imparting information.

All of this was building toward an electrifying finale: “exclusive” interviews with those two guys you hear from maybe only six times a day--presidential candidates George Bush and Michael Dukakis.

It was obvious that the show’s motive in booking them was not to make us smarter, but primarily for marquee value and secondarily to validate and respond to the latest USA Today poll on the election campaign.

Bush and Dukakis were interviewed separately via satellite for two minutes each by Magnus, who shrewdly and mercilessly fired her soft questions down the middle of the plate, forcing the candidates to slam them out of the park. Did they pay for this spot or what?

A new title is in order. “USA Today: The Gong Show.”

Meanwhile, the most distinctive and immediately likable thing about the premiere of “World Monitor” was that it contained not one picture or mention of Bush or Dukakis.

This program is a giant step forward for the Discovery Channel, giving topical immediacy to a cable network known primarily for its worthy documentaries. And not to be discounted is the greater visibility that the program gives the Christian Science Monitor and its new magazine, not coincidentally named . . . World News Monitor.

Anchored in Boston by that credible former CBS and NBC correspondent John Hart, “World Monitor” the television show is also not intended as a primary newscast, although it does snap off a few daily headlines. It is designed instead to provide the global perspective usually lacking in the newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and PBS, by relying on the Monitor’s many foreign bureaus and linking Hart by satellite to the newspaper’s offices in Washington, London and Tokyo.

Monday’s opener bode well for the program’s future as “World Monitor” made the most of its 22 minutes by effectively pairing the perilous, volatile and circuitous routes to possible democracy being taken by Chile and Burma.

The six-minute Chile profile was followed by seven minutes on Burma that included a three-way chat among Hart, “World Monitor” senior correspondent Tokashi Oka in Tokyo and Burma authority Robert H. Taylor in London.

The program was elegant and clean, except for some uneven footage and Hart and Oka occasionally talking over each other in the Burma segment.

The best came later--a four-minute report on postwar Amerasians, offspring of American GIs and Vietnamese women. In limbo between two societies, most still live in Vietnam, but some have come to the United States in search of their fathers and their identities. It was moving and poignant, touching you in a way that newscasts seldom do.

“World Monitor” and “USA Today: The Television Show”--shows for people whose tastes are worlds apart.