The Road to ‘Sleaze’ Leads to Channel 2 : Ratings: KCBS reporter Dorothy Lucey gets an assignment so tawdry it makes Johnny Carson’s monologue.

This is the story of Dorothy and the Wizards of Ooze.

Dorothy is KCBS Channel 2 reporter Dorothy Lucey, who drew the short straw in being assigned to last week’s grimy ratings-sweeps series on sleaze. Yes, news series.

The “wizards” are the Channel 2 executives who conceived or approved or condoned this incredibly cynical exercise in audience manipulation by a flagship station of CBS, the network with the most honored tradition in all of TV news.

In addition to turning in his grave, Edward R. Murrow is probably hissing. Bill Stout too.

Lucey’s series appears to have gotten its first promotional boost in the May 6 edition of the Los Angeles Times, where a 6-inch ad on the front page of the Sunday classifieds trumpeted:

“THE SEARCH FOR SLEAZE.”

Tucked between ads seeking contestants for a game show titled “The Opposite Sex” and one matching singles (“Looking for Love?”) was a Channel 2 “Action News” ad promising “10 Gorgeous GIRLS!” It also promised “9 Gorgeous COSTUMES!”

Simple math gave you the message: One less gorgeous costume than gorgeous girl.

An “Action News” nude? Based on the ad, viewers would have to wait until 11 p.m. Monday--the announced premiere date for “The Search for Sleaze”--to find out.

At least one member of the Channel 2 news staff decided not to wait. According to station sources, someone attached a copy of the ad to the newsroom bulletin board on the day it ran with the following comment: “This is awful!”

Someone else apparently agreed. Later in the week, the sources said, a memo to the staff from news director Michael Singer appeared on the bulletin board apologizing for the ad, saying it was run without his knowledge and promising that this sort of thing would not reoccur.

What Singer didn’t apologize for, but definitely should have, was the series.

As it turned out, the ad was wrong, for “The Search for Sleaze” did not air until Tuesday’s 11 p.m. newscast, after initially taking a back seat to the familiar search for self-promotion.

In another challenging assignment on Monday’s late newscast, Lucey went “face to face” with Connie Chung--whose CBS interview special had aired the previous hour--in a retrospective of Chung’s years at Channel 2. In old footage, there was Chung giggling, clowning and dancing on an anchor desk with Jess Marlow, who was then at Channel 2. What a coup! While other stations no doubt drooled jealously, KCBS had the Chung story exclusively.

Are these people for real?

If the Chung celebration’s newsiness was not immediately apparent, the story was Woodward and Bernstein compared to the “The Search for Sleaze,” which started the next night. One look told you Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas.

There was little Dotto touring the crummy parts of Hollywood accompanied part of the time by a professional starlet with panoramic breasts. No nudes, actually (the ad was misleading there too), but lots of skin, gyrating dancers, racy lingerie and X-rated cakes.

Another of Lucey’s tour guides was a sleaze about town named Johnny Legend sitting in the back of a stretch limo between two scantily clad females.

Thursday’s finale probed the always fascinating world of female mud and oil wrestling, with Channel 2 (“Check the oil in the car and on the girls,” Lucey said) getting the muddiest.

See the body being oiled. See the body talking: “What I am is a female mud and oil wrestler.” See the cowgirl exotic dancer pat her huge breasts and draw her six-shooters. In the dim red glow of Hollywood’s frowzy clubs, see everything.

“The Search for Sleaze” was so utterly tawdry and mindlessly banal that it made Johnny Carson’s monologue.

In fact, Channel 2 itself last week ran promos appearing to mock its own series, with Lucey advertising “big sleaze, big ratings,” in effect hyping the very thing the station was pretending to ridicule.

As an ends-justify-means place, Channel 2 inevitably defends its forays into newscast pandering as a way of also exposing viewers to the good journalism it does. Mike O’Connor’s current investigative series on abuses in the exotic bird trade classifies here.

With sleaze gaining legitimacy at the station as a suitable come-on, however, how long before the carrot becomes the centerpiece?

After Lucey concluded her series Thursday night, everyone on the Channel 2 news set, including Lucey herself, seemed embarrassed. In fact, that credible pro Tritia Toyota wore such an unhappy expression that she appeared to be in a state of mourning.

“Maybe we should just go ahead and apologize to everybody who’s been watching this series,” Lucey said.

“The series is finished?” Jim Lampley said in a half-question that sounded almost like a prayer.

“That’s it, it’s over,” Lucey said.

“Thank you,” Lampley said.

“Thank you’s the word?” Lucey asked, sheepishly.

Right. Thank God was more appropriate. “The Search for Sleaze.” Actually, Lucey never had to leave the building.