Channel 8 Pins Hopes on Newsroom Veteran : Anchor: The station thinks that experienced and low-key newscaster Hal Clement is the one to go beyond just a reading of the news.

Amiable and far removed from the image of a male model anchor, Hal Clement is the cornerstone of the new Channel 8 anchor team.

News Director Jim Holtzman wants to emphasize easygoing, older, versatile anchors with roots in San Diego. That’s Clement, 41, a graduate of San Diego State University, who has come up through the ranks at Channel 8 to become one of the city’s main news anchors.

“In my mind, he is the perfect person for what the business has become,” Holtzman said. “The demands the public is putting on anchors are greater now. I think the public wants a guy who can go beyond just someone who can read to them.”

Clement has been working news since 1984 as the host of Channel 8’s 4:30 p.m. newscast, but some San Diegans may forget that his background is in sports. His career began as weekend sports anchor for KGTV (Channel 10) in 1971, after graduating from SDSU.

“I always wanted to do sports,” said Clement, who grew up in Pasadena. His mother wrote for television shows such as as “My Three Sons” and “I Remember Mama.” His father, who died when Clement was 2, was a writer and director, mainly for radio.

“I grew up listening to (Dodger announcer) Vin Scully, and I always wanted to be him.”

Clement moved up to the main Channel 10 news post in 1974 after Al Coupee left the station. When Holtzman left his job as a producer at Channel 10 to take the job of news director at Channel 8, he wanted to take Clement with him, but Clement couldn’t get out of his contract. Instead, Holtzman hired a sportscaster from Philadelphia--Ted Leitner.

A year later, in 1979, Clement moved to Channel 8 to take the weekend sports job. Clement says he took a pay cut to leave, but was “tired of working” at Channel 10.

“I liked Jim, and I had a good working relationship with him as a producer,” Clement explained. “I thought it would be fun to be on the ground floor” of a developing news operation.

He gradually grew weary of sports, though, as he found himself reporting more and more about drug scandals and salary disputes than actual games. He says he realized his days as a sports reporter were numbered the day outspoken San Diego Padres pitcher John Montefusco refused to do an interview with him.

“He would talk to anybody,” Clement said with a laugh. “I said, ‘That’s it.’ Dealing with these players is driving me crazy.”

He had a chance to break out of his normal routine in 1982 when he accompanied the UCSD baseball team on a tour of China. When he returned, he and Holtzman agreed that it was time for him do news features, and the station hired former Chargers linebacker Jim Laslavic, now with KNSD-TV (Channel 39), as the weekend sports anchorman.

The news feature segment became “Words and Pictures,” Clement’s regular lyrical looks at the offbeat and quieter sides of the San Diego community.

Clement’s next break came in 1984, when anchorman Marty Levin hurt his back. Clement filled in for Levin anchoring the 4:30 p.m. newscast, eventually taking over when Levin landed the 5 p.m. newscast after Michael Tuck jumped to Channel 10.

On the 4:30 newscast, Clement hit his stride. Designed as a relaxed, informal newscast, Clement was able to do more than read the news. Interview segments were a key part of the newscast, and it was not unusual for Clement to get up and walk into other parts of the newsroom to talk with staffers about stories.

With his jacket off, Clement’s easygoing style came to the forefront. He was able to chat with visiting foreign dignitaries and zookeepers holding bizarre animals with equal ease. And, after the first few weeks, few people questioned why a sports reporter was doing news.

“It helped that I did the 4:30 first. It gave me an opportunity to build credibility because I had a chance to do live interviews,” he said.

Through the years, Clement says he never felt any impulse to shop his tapes, to see if he could make it in another market. When he accepted the main anchor job, he stipulated that he didn’t want to do the 11 p.m. newscast so the job wouldn’t take him away from his family.

“My job has always been the second-most important thing to me; my family has always been the most important,” said Clement, who has two daughters--Stacey, 13, and Brooke, 10--with his wife of 16 years, Patty.

Now he is in the proverbial hot seat. Although he’s always been an integral part of the newscast, now the success or failure of the newscast will be taken as a reflection on his own ability to win over an audience.

“My neck is right there, exposed,” he acknowledges. “Day to day, you can’t think about it, but, when the ratings go on the board I’ll be right there looking at them.”

Clement will not attempt to change his conversational on-air persona to fit the new role.

“I can’t get my voice to sound like James Earl Jones,” he said.

But the 5 p.m. newscast has a much more formal air than the 4:30 show, and he will attempt to make some changes.

“I think I do have to make an adjustment in terms of raising my energy level,” he said, “although I’m never going to be one of those guys who jumps through the camera and screams at people.”