There’s Always Radio

“Into the Night Starring Rick Dees” is for people who find “The Arsenio Hall Show” too deep and complex.

With lots of skin from leggy announcer Lisa Canning, nightly music from Billy Vera and the Beaters, and noisy support from a studio audience that would hoot and cheer even for Dr. Mengele, KIIS-FM super deejay Dees is now starting his second week as ABC’s late-night hope (midnight on Channel 7).

He opened chaotically, with a week of the terrible zanies.

Having also predicted dire things for Arsenio (whose nationally syndicated show airs locally on KCOP Channel 13), I don’t exactly come from great strength here and, for all anyone knows, Dees may thrive on ABC into the next century.

However, it is hard to identify the audience ABC is going after with this series that some network affiliates are delaying even past its midnight time slot. Is it the make-me-laugh-with-sophomoric-jokes-after-”Nightline” audience? The stay-up-all-night-16-year-old audience? The we-love-Rick-Dees-no-matter-how-dumb-his-show-is audience? The I-remember-Ernie Kovacs- but-not-well-enough-to-know-that-Dees-is-a-very-bad-imitation audience?

You have to admire Dees’ energy and persistence. The former “Solid Gold” host is involved in nearly every on-camera aspect of his show, from interviewing to taking part in silly comedy bits to introducing--and then salivating over--the rockers and rappers who turn his studio audience into a screaming mob.

And “Into the Night” does try to be at least somewhat off center. There’s an aptly named “wall of shame” that guests are asked to sign before pressing the flesh with the studio audience. Dumb but different. Every so often, moreover, a Dees interview with one of the show’s company of not-quite-off-the-wall characters yields a laugh. What’s more, there’s the occasional satire that doesn’t drag interminably, as in a funny one that was titled “Julie Andrews Sings Paula Abdul.”

But pu leeeeeeze .

Dees is quick enough and has some skills as a counterpunching ad-libber. He is, however, a terrible monologist and is awkward and unfunny when it comes to participating in the show’s set pieces.

He’s had some decent guests: Ed Begley Jr. and Smokey Robinson, for example. But as an interviewer, Dees is a cross between Arsenio and Merv, tending to fawn a lot and lean forward from the edge of his seat as if poised to hug. As with most every other talk-type show on the television map, moreover, his interviews are the kind where lips move without anything being said, and where the ultimate purpose is to spit out a few words and get to the movie clip.

It’s highly possible that the predatory jaws of late-night will chew up and spit out Dees just as they did “The Pat Sajak Show” on CBS and infinite other pretenders. Like surfers and boaters who continue to venture to sea despite knowing a giant maneater lurks there, however, still more late-nighters are on the way.

Starting tonight on CBS (12:40 a.m. on Channels 2 and 8) is “The Midnight Hour,” a talk show tentatively scheduled to last eight weeks, holding down the time period until what the network says is its permanent late-night schedule of first-run comedy and adventure programs is ready. Joy Behar will host the first week of “The Midnight Hour,” Peter Tilden the second.

And what’s left for Dees? Radio is what’s left.

“The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” has taken some hits for being bland and politically conservative in its choice of interview subjects. Yet no newscast anywhere has a greater resource than this PBS program does in Nina Totenberg, whose primary job is as public affairs correspondent for National Public Radio.

Totenberg gave one of her typical performances Friday in explaining a federal appeals court’s decision overturning one of three felony convictions against former Marine Col. Oliver North growing out of the Iran-Contra case, and referring the other two back to federal Judge Gerhard A. Gesell for rehearing.

There was none of the posturing that one often gets from a network correspondent stiffly facing the camera outdoors, with some massive federal edifice looming in the background. Typcially, Totenberg gave meaning to something dry and complex, separating the significant from the superfluous. Sitting with co-anchor Jim Lehrer, she calmly, casually and conversationally explained the decision and its likely ramifications in language so clear and simple that any ordinary schlub (including this one) could understand.

That’s a real reporter.

Attacking CNN for its hiring of a Texas judge named Catherine Crier to co-anchor its prime newscast--as some TV critics did at a meeting in Los Angeles recently--misses the point.

For one thing, Crier won’t be one of those traveling anchors, parachuted in to big stories merely to impress viewers by getting her mug on camera in some hot spot.

For another, if CNN’s news coverage has suffered because of Crier being untrained as a journalist, that hasn’t been noticeable. On the contrary, Crier has made herself into a competent and professional newsreader, putting to rest the fable that a journalistic background is required for news anchoring. In almost all cases, good communicating is all that’s required.

Along with looking like a journalist.