Live Television Coverage Is Almost as Thick as the Oil

Looking for an edge in covering the American Trader oil spill, local TV news stations have dispatched multiple news crews, gone along for rides on U.S. Coast Guard cutters and sent up their helicopters for aerial views.

Los Angeles station KNBC-TV went a step further Monday when they sent anchors John Beard and Linda Alvarez to Huntington Beach to broadcast the 4 p.m. newscast live from atop a parking structure near the sand.

“It certainly is one of the major local stories of the last year or two,” said John Rohrbeck, vice president and general manager of KNBC’s top-rated local news program. Bringing the anchors to the story “puts the significance of it in perspective,” Rohrbeck said.

Executives at rival stations weren’t convinced. “I’m not sure I quite know what the point of that is,” said Michael Singer, news director at KCBS-TV.

Jeff Wald, news director at independent station KTLA-TV, put it more diplomatically: “I don’t know if that imparts any more information necessarily, but it’s an interesting approach.”

The live broadcast is just one example of the resources local TV stations have been putting into covering the spill and its aftermath. Wald called it “one of the major (local) stories we’ve had in a long time.”

The story has brought out the competitive edge in local newscasts. KNBC promoted its live, on-the-scene newscast extensively. At KCBS, Singer proudly noted that his station beat the competition--by three minutes--in getting the first aerial views of the disabled tanker on the air. KTLA anchor Hal Fishman even piloted his own plane over the spill area, with reporter Steve Lentz riding shotgun.

Since last Wednesday, when the oil began leaking from the ruptured tanker American Trader, local stations have been sending reporters to the beach to give live reports. When the first oil hit the sands at Newport Beach, news crews with their bright lights mobbed the few cleanup workers dispatched to the scene.

Time dedicated to the spill on local hourlong newscasts has averaged from 10 to 20 minutes. Los Angeles stations KTTV, KTLA, KCBS and KNBC report having at least two reporters and camera crews on the scene each day. Executives at KABC-TV, Los Angeles’ third network-affiliate news program, did not return phone calls.

Orange County’s only local newscast, on Anaheim-based KDOC, opened its Wednesday program with a live, eight-minute report from Huntington Beach and has devoted about six minutes of its half-hour show to the spill on each nightly program since. (The station, which started its news program last year, does not broadcast on Saturday or Sunday.)

KNBC executive producer Nancy Bauer said the decision to broadcast Monday’s entire newscast from Huntington Beach was made Friday. On Sunday’s 11 p.m. newscast, one of two anchors was stationed there.

Sending anchors to big news stories is increasingly popular among national network news operations, and has also been adopted by KNBC. In 1985, KNBC broadcast a live newscast from the site of the destructive Baldwin Hills fire, and during the 1988 Olympics the station broadcast live from Seoul, South Korea.

Bauer said the station had a staff of about 40 people in Huntington Beach on Monday to achieve the live broadcast, including the two anchors, five reporters and a large technical crew.