Taking the Hot Seat at Channel 10 : Media: Weekend anchor Stephen Clark will undoubtedly be compared to Michael Tuck when he replaces him later this month, but he does have a few things of his own going for him.

Chances are that no one will say anything directly to Stephen Clark about it, but the pressure will be there, hovering around him, fueled by his own expectations and the fickle habits of the local television news audience.

After two years as weekend anchor and reporter with KGTV (Channel 10), Clark has been tabbed to replace anchorman Michael Tuck, the closest thing to a star in local television news and the key cog in Channel 10’s top-rated newscasts. Tuck, who is leaving later this month for KCBS-TV (Channel 2) in Los Angeles, helped KFMB-TV (Channel 8) become the No. 1 news operation in the city before doing the same for Channel 10.

“You don’t lose a major anchor like Michael Tuck without being concerned about the impact,” said Channel 10 News Director Paul Sands.

It will be the first major anchor job for the 34-year-old Clark. It’s inevitable that people will be judging him, comparing him to Tuck. More important, the station will be watching its ratings, and Clark will carry the burden of attempting to win public acceptance.

“Maybe I’m oblivious” to the pressure, Clark said in a recent interview, “but I don’t feel it.”

Clark moves into the situation with several advantages. For one, he is already familiar with the market, and, to a degree, the market knows him. He also is replacing Tuck the anchor, not Tuck the commentator, who was well known for his acerbic “Perspective” pieces.

“I think our styles are quite a bit different,” Clark said.

A friend of Clark’s recently gave him a plaque engraved, “The Tuck Stops Here.”

“If I try to be Superanchor, I’ll fail,” he said. “The exercise for me is to focus on what I’ve always done.”

Replacing a popular anchor is a situation most anchors face at one time or another. When KNSD-TV (Channel 39) anchorman Marty Levin was hired to replace successful Harold Greene at Channel 10 in the late ‘70s, he later learned that many people at the station expected the station’s ratings to plummet.

“They weren’t saying that to me, but they were saying it privately, and it didn’t happen,” Levin said.

The pressure to follow in the footsteps of a successful personality is largely self-imposed, he said.

“One of the great failings of TV news, it seems to me, is the continual efforts to duplicate the person who went before him,” Levin said. Clark has to “rely on his own ability and his own level of self-confidence. He can’t imitate someone else. That’s the biggest sin in the business.”

In the weeks ahead, Channel 10 will be attempting to position Clark with the San Diego audience. His detractors say Clark comes across like a lightweight, a good-looking talking head. Ultimately, the audience will decide for itself.

People rarely tune in to see a particular anchor, but they often will tune out if they don’t like one. Anchors are judged by audiences on many levels, but, experts say, the most important factors are sincerity, credibility and general “likability.”

Channel 10 will attempt to establish Clark’s personality as a reporter, first and foremost, which Clark finds ironic.

“For years, I was a reporter trying to establish myself as an anchor,” he said.

Instead of the occasional reporting done by most anchors, the station will be using Clark as much as possible on major stories. They’ve also started doing regular “themecasts,” newscasts devoted to a single topic, which will feature Clark as the ringmaster. The first themecast, an edition of the 6:30 p.m. news, was devoted to water conservation.

“This is a guy who knows how to go out and do stories and do the news,” Sands said. Most of Clark’s experience has been as a reporter.

He is the son of a retired Air Force two-star general and attended North Colorado University, intending to major in music. He played several woodwind instruments, specializing in classical and jazz music. These days, he primarily plays guitar, stylistically gravitating toward “an odd country-folk, Jimmy Buffett kind of thing,” he said.

After he graduated with a degree in journalism, his career followed a route rather typical for television journalists, starting in radio and working his way through stations in Colorado Springs and Wichita, Kan., before landing in Denver, where he worked as a weekend anchor and reporter.

News in Denver was a “lot more conservative, a lot more more stoic” than San Diego television news, Clark said. “Here the whole atmosphere is more laid back, more fun, more lively. It fits me personally more.”

Clark moved to San Diego in 1988. He and his wife of 3 1/2 years, Larenne, a native of New Zealand, live in Scripps Ranch. They’re expecting their first child in a few months.

Thanks in part to his new job, Clark says he no longer has that same drive to work his way to the large Los Angeles or New York markets, which “have the same quirks as lower levels, except magnified.”

For the past month, the station has been working Clark into the anchor rotation more and more as it prepares for Tuck’s departure. When Clark officially takes over the 5 p.m. anchor seat later this month, he will be surrounded by Carol LeBeau, Kimberly Hunt, Mike Ambrose and sportscaster Larry Sacknoff, all local veterans, which should help the transition.

“If people tune in to Channel 10, they’re not going to suddenly see a new station,” Clark said. “It’s not going to be a shock to see me on the news.”

Clark’s ability to assimilate with his on-air partners, most of whom lobbied for Clark to get the job, will be a key to his success. Chemistry is a word used for successful television news teams as much as it used for sports teams.

“I think, in this business, the individual is overrated,” Levin said. “Either someone fits into the team or not.”

But there is no doubt the spotlight will be on Clark. Channel 8’s Susan Roesgen experienced a similar situation last year when she replaced Allison Ross, who was a popular figure with Channel 8’s audience for more than a decade. Unlike Clark, she faced the disadvantage of coming into the market as an unknown. Ross had left the station several weeks before she arrived, so Roesgen knew little about her predecessor.

“I just tried to be me,” Roesgen said. “I didn’t even know what people were talking about” when they discussed the pressure of replacing Ross.

Although Channel 8’s ratings had been slipping before Roesgen arrived, much of the analysis of the station’s recent ratings problems has focused on her, as the newest member of the team.

“You have to have some pride,” she said. “If I thought I was a failure, that it’s all me, how could I hold up? But I never thought that.”

Roesgen’s advice for Clark was simple and to the point: “Keep a low profile. Keep a check on your ego and smile a lot.”