Saying Something About TV News : Television: ‘WIOU’ and ‘ENG’ depict some of the critical issues facing TV journalism. KNBC’s ‘Kelly & Gail’ is one such issue.

It’s a ratings sweeps month--circus time! So the station cooks up a self-promoting, self-congratulatory story to build audience artificially, assigning its goofy weatherman to prepare a cushy series purporting to look behind the scenes of a news department.

The station’s own news department.

Sound familiar? It should. KABC-TV Channel 7 and its weatherman--amiable ol’ “Dr.” George Fischbeck did just that not too long ago.

Only this time, instead of on Channel 7, the hype is fiction. It’s a future plot on “WIOU,” the promising new CBS series about that silly farm known as local news.

Premiering at 10 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, “WIOU” is one of three fall series with something to say about local news. Another is “ENG,” a Canadian series in its second month of airing at 7 p.m. weeknights on Lifetime cable. Like “WIOU,” it’s a drama set in a big-city TV newsroom.

“WIOU” and “ENG” (whose initials stand for Electronic News Gathering) regard their subject similarly. Both depict a mix of honorable and dishonorable characters in a frenetic universe of fast-food news, wherein the chase for the story eclipses the story itself.

The third series, airing at 9 a.m. weekdays on KNBC Channel 4, is the just-premiered talk show “Kelly & Gail.” It’s about the news business--indirectly.

In allowing its longtime news anchor Kelly Lange to co-host this foamy entertainment item (just as Channel 7 once had Tawny Little doubling as a news anchor and co-host of its “A.M. Los Angeles”), Channel 4 is indicating how it regards local news.

“WIOU”--the title is a nickname for a failing network affiliate whose actual call letters are WNDY--is hardly TV’s first prime-time look at local news. There was “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” among others. And prominent “WIOU” regulars Helen Shaver and Mariette Hartley themselves have starred previously in short-lived series about local news: Shaver in the drama “Jessica Novak” (1981), Hartley in the comedy “Goodnight, Beantown” (1983-84).

Premiering with an uneven episode that at once misses wildly and is bitingly on target, “WIOU” tonight introduces us to Hank Zaret (John Shea), the new news director hired to get WNDY “back to No. 1”; reporter-about-to-become-anchor Kelby Robinson (Shaver), who is Zaret’s former flame, and Neal Frazier (Harris Yulin), the station’s fading but pompous $1.3-million-a-year anchor.

Other characters: Liz McVay (Hartley), the executive producer who wants to be news director; ambitious reporter Eddie Bock (Phil Morris); earnest field producer Ann Hudson (Jayne Brook); manipulative newsreader-turned-reporter Taylor Young (Kate McNeil); aggressive intern Willis Teitlebaum (Wallace Langham); Dr. George-style weatherman Floyd Graham (Dick Van Patten); wimpy general manager Kevin Dougherty (Robin Gammell) and station p.r. man Tony Pro (Joe Grifasi).

This is a very strong cast, with Yulin especially grand tonight as Frazier, “the most lecherous anchorman in America.” Written by co-creators John Eisendrath and Kathryn Pratt, the story opens hilariously, as Frazier’s co-anchor collapses on the set during a station break and the newscast resumes with Zaret just visible behind the anchor desk desperately trying to revive the dying man.

The dramatic crux of the premiere is Robinson’s personal involvement in a story she is covering. However, it’s those flourishes of humor--some aimed at the prevailing sexism in TV news--that most distinguish this first hour. In one early scene, foes Frazier and Robinson are on camera together with his hand planted on her thigh beneath the anchor desk. She forces him to remove it only by returning the favor and publicly embarrassing him.

Later, after Frazier has personally imported the sexy Young from Tampa in hopes of making her his new co-anchor, she touts station chief Dougherty on her “very desirable” audience demographics.

“How are you with men 18 to 34?” Dougherty asks. “Right on top of them,” Young replies.

If only “WIOU” were always on top of its story. Some of it--such as Zaret making almost seat-of-the pants anchor picks at a big station immediately after arriving--approaches farce. And a couple of characters--such as the general manager and a newspaper gossip columnist who somehow has unchallenged access to the station--are caricatures.

What “WIOU” does promise to do--as “ENG” does almost daily--is to depict entertainingly some of the critical issues facing TV news.

In some ways, both series are strikingly similar. Both accurately affirm the essential predatory nature of all daily journalism, the often unavoidable exploitation of misery in which news stories are predicated on the misfortunes of others.

In both series, a capable female executive producer has been passed over as news director. In both, ambitious reporters fight over turf and general managers are obsessed with ratings. In both, journalistic excesses--those instances of unjustified predation--are not only forgiven, but sometimes not even noted.

In the pilot for “ENG,” for example, daredevil cameraman Jake Antonelli (Mark Humphrey) was never admonished for ignoring firefighters’ warnings and entering a flaming building. Nor is enterprising intern Teitlebaum second-guessed for doing almost the same thing with a cameraman tonight on “WIOU.”

Going along with his boss’s wish that “WIOU” anchorman Frazier become a Shriner to salvage an advertising account, news director Zaret initially seems at least somewhat open to questionable compromise. And so does his usually stubborn “ENG” counterpart Mike Fennell (Art Hindle), who only meekly objected when his boss insisted that anchorman Seth Miller (Jim Millington) stand and pace in front of the anchor desk during newscasts.

Bearing the title of “managing editor” as well as anchorman, Frazier is much more of a key newsroom player than his “ENG” counterpart, but “ENG” general manager Kyle Copeland (George R. Robertson) interferes in the news much more than Dougherty of “WIOU.”

At one point, Copeland endorsed a reporter’s news re-enactment: “I saw, I felt what actually happened.” Fennell disagreed: “It’s not what actually happened. It’s somebody’s idea of what happened.” Executive producer Ann Hildebrandt (Sara Botsford) sided with Copeland: “Every report we do is somebody’s idea of what happened.”

More than anything, it’s these kind of internal debates about news ethics that energize and give relevance to “ENG.” Although ethically on the side of the angels, Fennell was overruled on the re-enactment. But he had his way in another controversial story when he shouldn’t have, causing a newsroom rebellion by airing Antonelli’s close-up footage of a deranged man killing a hostage and then committing suicide. He argued, as other news directors might: “It was emotional, it wasn’t cold hard facts and figures and it took the story past the brain and into the guts.”

Fennell’s reporters habitually cross into advocacy journalism, getting off with admonitions for offenses that should cost them their jobs. If nothing else, then, “ENG” depicts a station that not infrequently makes bad decisions. In this instantaneous realm, there is rarely time to sit back and think about consequences. We do hear internal protests against news ghoulishness, but only mild ones that are brushed aside in the rush to cover spot news and get it on the air live.

Bad decisions are not exclusive to fictional TV stations. Witness Channel 4’s approval of Lange’s live half-hour talk show with veteran comedy writer Gail Parent (now with NBC’s “Golden Girls”).

“Kelly & Gail” is on Channel 4 after an unsuccessful attempt to launch it nationally. On one level, it’s just plain bad--covering the usual titillating topics a la other talk shows--and shlocky. So much so that it has the look of one of those deceptive infomercials that appears to be a real talk show but isn’t.

Whether it’s a successful show is not really the point, however, for on another level we have the spectacle of Channel 4’s co-anchor at 6 and 11 p.m. now being associated with an entertainment program (other than her own newscasts, cynics might add). That Channel 4 would endorse this arrangement affirms its growing insensitivity and cavalier attitude toward maintaining the line separating news and entertainment.

It’s not that Lange has any news credentials to tarnish, only that her presence on this show rubs off on the newscasts she fronts.

On Monday’s premiere, Lange and Parent interviewed Dee and Christopher Stone of the syndicated “Lassie” series about their 11-year marriage. Lange, with those shrewd interviewing skills, wanted to know “all the ingredients to your happy marriage” and if “you go out of your way to build in romantic times.”

Tuesday’s topic was “sex after marriage.” With Parent handling the fluff, tough journalist Lange processed questions from the studio audience and led the questioning of a glib USC expert, who agreed with her that “desire decreases after marriage.” Later she asked him: “What’s going on in your bedroom?”

Meanwhile, coming soon on “Kelly & Gail,” a topic that sounds like a sweeps series: “Wild fights, wild sex!” This kind of stuff should embarrass a station, but if nothing else, Channel 4 has proved over the years that it doesn’t embarrass easily.