TV REVIEW : Things Come Up Roses in Parade Coverage

Southern California puts on its nicest face on New Year’s Day with the Tournament of Roses Parade, but the pressing question on Tuesday’s 102nd annual marching was . . . which station is the nicest, KTLA Channel 5 or KTTV Channel 11?

In this case, nicest is measured by who runs the fewest commercials and generally causes us viewers the least aggravation.

The stations have been sharpshooting at each other in recent weeks over who is the bestest with the leastest. Independent station KTLA is the dominant Rose watching station (its ratings last year, the fattest ever, exceeded the combined shares of the five other stations in town that carry the parade). The station boasts that it never leaves the parade because it uses see-through overlays with sponsors’ names rather than normal commercials.

This season, Fox Broadcasting-owned KTTV proclaimed that it wouldn’t run any commercials at all for the 2 1/2-hour spectacular. No overlays, no nothing.

In on-air pre-parade promos, veteran KTLA co-hosts Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards laughed incredulously over such an incredible proposal.

KTTV jabbed back. It ran promos with see-through titles for “Fishman’s Fish Market” and “Bell’s Ding Dong Diner,” playful shots at KTLA news director-anchor Hal Fishman and KTLA general manager Steve Bell.

Well, neither station’s cameras missed any of the 275 horses, 60 floats and 22 marching bands.

KTTV probably won for niceness, since its booth of Sarah Purcell, Marc Summers and oldtimer (his 44th parade!) Bill Welsh only made occasional four-second references to its sponsors--except for Welsh’s minutes-long tribute to the seven of them at the 8 a.m. step-off.

Meantime, KTLA had occasional 10-second pitches for each sponsor with the see-through labels. None was obtrusive.

But in darting around the dial trying to assess sheer goodness of coverage, KTLA was strides ahead.

For one thing, its 17 cameras plus helicopter (most of the equipment is rented, said the station’s parade executive producer, Joe Quasarano) are generally better posted since it has maintained priority positions. It launched parade coverage with two cameras in 1947.

Although we learned more about the private Edwards and Eubanks than we want to know--since their job is a matter of a little information and a lot of idle banter--they were well prepared and less silly than the giggly other team. That is, Purcell, unusually goofy, mentioned that since seeing the Kevin Costner movie “Dances With Wolves,” she has more respect for Indians; Summers, in reference to draft horses, wondered aloud to his thousands and thousands of viewers, “I didn’t know you can draft horses, can you?”

After the first go-around, KTLA ran repeats at 10:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. KTTV re-ran its show once as is at 10:30 a.m., then three more times in a row with the addition of 30 minutes of regular commercials in each replay.

Of course the other coverage--ABC, CBS, NBC and Spanish-language station KMEX Channel 34--were under no commercial restraints. Ed McMahon was all over the place urging us to win his $10 million and there was an unusually fat schedule for diet dealers like Dynatrim, Weight Watchers, Kellogg’s Special K, Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice--probably aiming at fatties resolving for the new year.