Stations Pull Out a Trump Card--and Lose

There must be a reason why America should so desperately care about the private lives and public machinations of Donald and Ivana Trump. None immediately comes to mind, however.

Here, it seems, is the classic example of media creating a topic for discussion and then breathing so much hot air into their own fatuous creation that it takes on a blimpish life of its own.

This is a Frankenstein monster, a non-story, an emperor preening without his clothes. More than anything, however, public discourse over the Trumps--concerning who gets how many assets in the dissolution of a billion-dollar marriage that probably few Americans knew even existed until recently--is a microcosm of the Super Bowl.

It’s here. It’s bigger than life. But why?

Now c’mon. Before all of this was fattened into obesity by battling New York gossip columnists and then gorged on by newspaper and TV tabloids and ultimately the mainstream media, did you care?

Most of us didn’t even know the name of Trump’s wife until a few weeks ago. Now we’re supposed to be alarmed that she may be getting only $25 million or $50 million from her macro-industrialist husband? This is a human rights issue? A feminist issue? A social issue? Ivana Trump, persecuted homeless person?

Fight back those tears.

Give her all of Manhattan if it will kill this trivia tapeworm that has invaded even the likes of news programs that define themselves as legitimate. Forget about “A Current Affair” or “Hard Copy” or “Donahue” or “Geraldo” or “Oprah.” This was “PrimeTime Live”--a production of ABC News--that last Thursday opened with the Trumps tabloid style, a mocking treatment that at once ridiculed the story and feasted on it. To emphasize just how low “PrimeTime Live” and its anchors, Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson, had sunk, the Trump segment was followed by a tie-in piece about suffering divorcees that also could have played just as easily on one of the tabloids.

Perhaps it was.

The best thing that Erik Sorenson did after taking over the helm of “CBS This Morning” was to aggressively pursue Paula Zahn to replace Kathleen Sullivan as Harry Smith’s co-host. Zahn started Monday.

It wasn’t that Sullivan was all that deficient--in fact, she’d grown in the job--only that Zahn promises to be much better, based on her work as morning news anchor on ABC and earlier as news anchor on KCBS Channel 2.

Here’s some simple addition: Zahn plus Deborah Norville (who recently succeeded Jane Pauley on NBC’s “Today”) plus ABC’s “Good Morning America” co-host Joan Lunden equals three blonds. A caller noted that fact recently, charging that the men who hire the talent at the big three networks favor dumb-blond stereotypes.

Perhaps. In this instance, however, the charge doesn’t fit, for Zahn has always projected an intelligence and sophisticated world awareness lacking in some of her counterparts, regardless of hair color or gender.

Here is one show where smarts and likability coexist smoothly, as evidenced by holdover Smith and by Zahn’s Monday debut, in which she capably handled the show’s lead interview with former President Jimmy Carter on Sunday’s Nicaraguan election. (Bryant Gumbel and Charle Gibson interviewed Carter on “Today” and “Good Morning America,” respectively).

Yet ratings are ratings, and morning shows are morning shows, so the key to Zahn’s success or failure may not be her brains--especially in light of Sorenson’s background in local news--but her ability to chat.

If Zahn is Sorenson’s best move, however, his worst is dropping Peter Bogdanovich, whose charming, wise and highly literate vignettes on movies were something to look forward to.

Adding the thin and tepid entertainment reports of Channel 2’s Steve Kmetko hardly fills that void, nor, likely, would signing movie critic Gene Siskel, with whom “CBS This Morning” has been negotiating. The major strength of “Siskel and Ebert”--still by far the best of TV’s movie review shows--remains the chemistry between Siskel and Roger Ebert, not either as an individual. Although a great team, moreover, they always seem to sputter in national TV appearances beyond their syndicated series.

So the verdict on Sorenson so far is one thumb up, the other down.

Amazing, isn’t it? With all the money they invest in their local newscasts, you’d think that KNBC Channel 4 and KABC Channel 7 could spare a few bucks for a dictionary. But nohhhhhh .

On a recent night of ratings sweeps frenzy, Channel 4 introduced David Sheehan’s interview with Tom Cruise as “exclusive” and Channel 7 introduced Gary Franklin’s interview with Cruise as “exclusive.” Astonishingly, these “exclusive” interviews of the same actor appeared on their respective newscasts simultaneously.

Cruise, shmuise, what does it matter anyway? It’s not like getting an interview with Greta Garbo or something. But honesty should matter.

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “exclusive” as: “Excluding or tending to exclude all others; shutting out other considerations, happenings, existances, etc.”

In other words, the interviews were not “exclusive,” but the introduction to each--by excluding and shutting out consideration of a competing Cruise interview--was carried out in an exclusive manner.

Another definition also applies here, the dictionary definition of a lie: “A false statement or action, especially one made with intent to deceive.”