The News Challenge: L.A.’s New Ethnic Mix : Television: No station has as yet become the mainstream voice of minorities, such as Latinos, Asian-Americans and blacks, who are rapidly turning into the majority.

It had to be embarrassing.

From 10 to 11 p.m. Monday, KCAL Channel 9’s ballyhooed, $30-million news operation and its $1-million anchor, Jerry Dunphy, averaged less than a 1 rating, according to the A.C. Nielsen research firm.

To be exact, it scored a 0.6 rating, which means only about 30,000 TV homes in the Greater Los Angeles area watched the final third of KCAL’s nightly, three-hour prime-time newscast.

KCAL’s share of the audience for that final hour averaged 1%, which meant that only one out of every 100 homes with the TV on was watching Channel 9.

And on Tuesday, there was further embarrassment in the same hour. While the numbers were up slightly to a 1.2 rating and 2% share, the last quarter hour sank to a 0.2 and a zero share in the Arbitron statistics--suggesting strongly that virtually nobody in L.A. was tuned in.

By contrast, KTLA Channel 5’s regular 10 to 11 p.m. news on Monday, anchored by Hal Fishman, scored a 6.3 Nielsen rating, which translates to about 300,000 TV homes--10 times the audience of the new, Disney-owned KCAL operation. On Tuesday, KTLA pulled a 5.6.

What to do if you’re KCAL? Throw up your hands? Of course not. The 11-day-old newscast is simply getting an ultra-fast lesson in the killer competition of L.A.’s television market, which is increasingly mercurial. As many people move farther and farther from the city’s core, viewing priorities change. In addition, a new multi-ethnic influx has dramatically altered the makeup of the Southland audience.

It’s a challenge to all of L.A.’s TV stations as their overall ratings slide. And while they promise to increase coverage in outlying areas, none has really taken the bold step of breaking from the pack and becoming the definitive mainstream TV station of the new Los Angeles--where minorities such as Latino, Asian-Americans and blacks are turning into the majority.

The 1990 census figures, when they eventually come out, may cause significant changes in local TV coverage because the new population trends will be officially confirmed and established, a solid advertising base and a reason for editorial adjustments.

Curiously, KCAL, despite its expected rough start--and if Disney stands behind it--may well be in the best possible position to seize the initiative in covering the new L.A. because it is not locked into the formats and traditions of the past. If it’s going to get whipped--and it will--while growing, it might as well put its money on the future of L.A. with a nightly newscast that simply looks different from the past.

“We’re looking at the diversity and richness of this entire area,” says KCAL News Director Bob Henry.

And, though a fledgling on the L.A. scene, KCAL nonetheless debuted with an utterly wonderful report that epitomized exactly the direction the station should be taking--a story of Vietnamese, which had to be moving not only to those who came here from their homeland, but also to all of us. For the new L.A. is changing our daily experiences.

KCAL’s Vietnamese report was extraordinary for what it promised, perhaps accidentally. Launching a five-part series, it offered a 7-minute report--ideal for the roomy, three-hour format--that included emotional scenes of Vietnamese children talking through tears in their own language. The stroke of genius was letting them go on and on, without translation. Kids sound the same in any language, reporter David Jackson said wisely.

If you were Vietnamese and living in L.A., you might well have been thinking: This is a station I must look at again. And if you were an old-time Angeleno, trying to keep up with the new L.A., you couldn’t help feel a bit more plugged in.

Of course, there are countless TV reports of L.A.’s so-called Third World melting pot, often dealing with its problems. Television stations are adept at focusing on gangs, drugs and misery--only the faces change.

But what is missing is the textured reporting that paints a day-in, day-out portrait of what is happening around us, the less sensational but significant developments that are remaking our city. What more perfect place for such reporting than a three-hour prime-time newscast? What an opportunity for a TV station to build a new audience--a new constituency--all its own.

No one’s doing it, though, among the major stations. But there are signs of awakening.

“I think the Hispanic community’s a third of viewership in the whole viewing area,” says KCBS Channel 2 News Director Michael Singer. “We’re about to do Spanish simulcasts for our 5 and 6 p.m. news to begin with, in the next few months. And we just hired Mike O’Connor, a former CBS reporter who’s fluent in Spanish and who’ll cover immigrant life in Los Angeles on an ongoing basis, and that doesn’t exclude other groups such as Asians.”

Singer adds that in-depth reports on the impact of L.A.’s growing ethnic scene are “a good idea. We don’t do enough of those stories in any neighborhood, whether minority or not. Frankly, it’s our loss that we don’t. It diminishes our newscasts. There’s a kind of thinness. We don’t have enough resources. We’re constantly doing the news stories of the day.”

KCAL’s Henry isn’t certain about how much of a beat to make “the new L.A. But we’re looking for areas in town that are underreported or aren’t often on television. We would hope to give a richer profile, more texture, more depth. We have the resources, the people.”

Ratings figures on the minority viewing audience in the Greater Los Angeles area are compelling. For Latinos, they range from 21% to 28% of TV homes in various surveys, but some feel Singer’s 33% estimate is closer to the truth and that the 1990 census may indicate it is higher than imagined. A ratings survey also says that blacks make up about 9% of TV homes.

Figures for the Asian-American TV audience also vary, mainly because there are so many different communities with different languages. But statistics in a 1988 survey suggest the size of the potential audience by offering rough estimates of some Asian-American groups in just Los Angeles County--350,000 Filipinos, at least 300,000 Koreans, 188,000 Japanese, 170,000 Chinese, 110,000 Thais, 60,000 Samoans, 50,000 Cambodians, 42,000 Vietnamese and 30,000 Laotians.

KTLA News Director Jeff Wald says, “We hired a planning editor not only for advance stories but to look into areas where we were weak, and also ethnic communities, the emerging L.A. We do a lot of marketing research and find there are opportunities to increase our audience. When we have to cover a gang story or tragedy, we try to cover two or three more positive things in the area.”

TV coverage of L.A. minority communities has a history of inadequacy. In 1983, a tornado that roared through South-Central L.A. got absurdly insufficient attention from local stations; if it had hit Rodeo Drive, they would have pulled programs for hours and been all over the story. To this day, inadequacy remains; KCAL’s Pat Harvey is the only regular weeknight anchor on a major L.A. station who is black.

But some things are changing. KSCI Channel 18 has blossomed as a station that caters to the area’s exploding international population, especially Asian-Americans. On Monday night at 9, for instance, it will offer a live broadcast of the Jimmie Awards, which “acknowledge the depiction of Asian/Pacific Americans in a balanced and realistic light.”

In 1988, CBS made a far-sighted pilot for a TV drama series--”Fort Figueroa,” in which an Iowa family lost its farm and inherited an L.A. apartment building with Vietnamese and Latino tenants. Directed by Luis Valdez and starring Charles Haid, it had a wonderful script that caught the change that was in the air here. Unfortunately, the show didn’t sell, but it had vision.

And vision is the key to producing L.A.’s winning TV news coverage of the 1990s. All that’s needed now is for a far-sighted station to see the future and grab it, because it’s already upon us.