A New Definition of News : ‘Tabloid’ TV Finds Continued Success--With Viewers

There was a time when true believers had to rifle through supermarket tabloids to find out the latest on whether Elvis Presley really died the day a bloated, overdosed body, now buried in the King’s grave, was found in a bathroom in Graceland.

Such inconveniences are now long past.

Flip on the tube Wednesday night, and, in the privacy of your own home, you can glory in two hours of “live” television dedicated to proving that Elvis not only did not die on Aug. 16, 1977, but lived on as an FBI Mafia buster.

“We will make a case that Elvis went into the federal witness-protection program,” said Mel Bergman, producer of the syndicated special “The Elvis Files.” “Six mob figures went to jail because of his direct involvement.”

“The Elvis Files,” which is syndicated by the same company that distributed the tabloid special “The Return to the Titanic,” will be hosted by actor Bill Bixby and broadcast from Las Vegas live to the East Coast, tape-delayed elsewhere.

With as many as 150 stations planning to air the program in prime time and as the ranks of tabloid or “reality” programming are swelling in syndication and on the networks, it appears that tabloid TV has come of age.

“It comes down to what people want to watch,” said Paul Siegel, president of the program’s syndicator, LBS Entertainment. “Something that is more sensational is more watchable.”

During television’s early days in the 1950s and ‘60s, network executives, who were trying to give the new medium credibility, modeled their news and information programming on the nation’s conservative broadsheet newspapers, not on the thriving, sensational tabloids of New York, Chicago and other large cities.

But as producers of local newscasts and, later, magazine shows soon discovered, flamboyance boosted ratings. The stodgy network news programs were soon preceded by local shows whose anchors played with live turkeys on the set at Thanksgiving and where stories about gruesome crimes and celebrity romances took precedence over civic affairs and social issues.

Network news magazines such as CBS’ “60 Minutes” and ABC’s “20/20” tested the limits of network magazine programs, and when that format proved too constraining, afternoon talk shows such as those hosted today by Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey and former “20/20” reporter Geraldo Rivera took up the slack.

Syndicated daily programs, which took publications such as the New York Post as their newspaper model, soon followed. Tabloid specials, most notably one documenting Rivera’s failed but flashy attempt to find booty in a vault claimed to have belonged to mobster Al Capone, drew unprecedented ratings.

“It starts out with competition--the lowest common denominator is always a safe competitive edge in mass communication,” said Reuven Frank, former president of NBC News and author of “Out of Thin Air: The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News.” “If the competitive pressures are such that standards and professionalism and taste are secondary, (tabloid TV) is what you get.”

But Av Westin, the former vice president for news at ABC who is now co-executive producer of “Inside Edition,” King World’s nightly magazine show, said that the term “tabloid” and the less-than-conservative approach to news it connotes need not be pejorative. “Inside Edition,” he pointed out, was recently nominated for an Emmy.

“There has always been room in the newspaper area for tabloids,” added Westin, who said that the newspaper counterparts for “Inside Edition” would be the tabloids the New York Daily News and the New York Post. “What’s happening now is that information on television is finally coming of age.”

Westin even predicts that tabloid programs will replace the network news for some viewers.

“I think (we) are in a position to take advantage of the collapse of the network evening news programs as the primary source of information at the dinner table,” Westin said.

“Inside Edition,” he said, covers not only gossip and human-interest stories--what those in the tabloid trade call “popular press”--but also sends reporters to cover international events such as the Persian Gulf War.

According to Anthea Disney, executive producer of Twentieth Television’s “A Current Affair” and a former editor at the New York Daily News, stories that work for television tabloids are frequently similar to those published in their print counterparts.

“Drama, passion, the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins--all these things are grist for the mill for tabloid print or television,” Disney said.

Television’s need for visuals aside, “very much the same stories would appear on the main news pages of the Daily News or the Post,” Disney said. “Stories that center around people, dramatic circumstances that occur to people--stories that make people say, ‘Thank God it didn’t happen to me.’ ”

“A Current Affair,” she said, is likely to do stories similar to those that might appear either in daily news tabloids, or in the supermarket weeklies.

“Some of the stories in the more reliable (supermarket tabloids) like the National Enquirer, The Star or the Globe might be stories we would do,” she said. “But we would handle them differently.”

The program would not tend to do stories about Elizabeth Taylor’s struggles with weight and chemical dependency, she said, but might pick up on the grisly news stories or big celebrity scandals.

“We did a story recently about a professor in Texas who was arrested because he was accused by a young woman of having picked her up one evening--they had an ad hoc date--and then kept her in a closet for two weeks,” Disney said.

Another story claimed that British Capt. Mark Philips, who is married to Princess Anne, had fathered a daughter in New Zealand, and featured footage of a little girl who was said to be the child.

“The supermarket tabloids would have all those kinds of stories, along with Liz, and we would have (just) one or two of them a week,” said Disney. And while the program might tackle the same stories as the Enquirer, Disney insisted, it reports them in a more responsible way.

Television tabloids differ from their print counterparts primarily in the area of entertainment coverage and celebrity gossip.

“They pick up the crime stories, but they don’t break the big celebrity exclusive stories like the Enquirer does,” said Iain Calder, editor of the Florida-based National Enquirer, the nation’s leading supermarket tabloid and its largest selling weekly paper. “When a big thing happens like the Kennedy job, then people like (“A Current Affair” reporter Steve Dunleavy) do a pretty good job in coming up with interesting material, but they don’t break out with their own stories.”

About 10 years ago, Calder said, Fox approached the Enquirer with an idea for what would have been the nation’s first tabloid TV shows, but the program was a failure.

“They did a pilot that was so bad we went crimson with embarrassment and never went anywhere with it,” Calder said.

The problem with TV tabs, Calder said, is that they aren’t willing to shell out the money that a publication like the Enquirer spends investigating gossip and unusual news items.

“We spend $16 million a year on editorial,” said Calder, whose answer to whether TV tabs can fill the Enquirer’s shoes is an emphatic, “No.”

He said the television shows have not begun to emulate the supermarket tabloids in the area of self-help stories, such as the diets, quizzes and financial advice that comprise the approximately 150 features and items that fill the Enquirer’s pages each week.

“People who read us regularly feel like they’re part of a family,” Calder said. “Tabloid TV can’t do that.”

What tabloid TV can do is garner ratings--big ones.

“Return to the Titanic,” which aired in 1987, received 25 rating points, according to syndicator LBS, drawing nearly twice the number of viewers as prime time’s highest-rated programs. The 1986 special “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults,” despite the show’s utter failure to find booty in the safe which Rivera blew up--or anywhere else--received a 31.8 rating, nearly three times that of the normal “Cheers” audience.

“A Current Affair” has higher ratings than the “CBS Evening News.” According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., “A Current Affair” has had an average national Nielsen rating of 7.7 this summer, and is watched by 17.9 million viewers, while CBS’ nightly news show has averaged a 7.6 rating.

“Inside Edition” is the 10th most-popular program on television, according to its producers.

Ratings, of course, mean money. Not only will advertisers pay to be part of a show expected to draw a large audience, but local stations will pay more to syndicators for the right to air the show.

For “The Elvis Files,” LBS has even set up a 900-number on which viewers may call--for $2 a call--with questions or to offer their own theories about Elvis’ whereabouts.

“Is it a little exploitative? Yes, it is,” said “Elvis Files” producer Bergman. “But there are compelling elements that create a terrific story that is not bogus. And my job is to make as good a show as I can make.”

“The Elvis Files” will employ handwriting experts who say Elvis wrote his own death certificate and include interviews with people who say they have seen Elvis since his death, Bergman said. It will discuss FBI files alleged to contain background information about the singer’s involvement in a sting operation against organized crime.

All of which is likely to increase viewership and thoroughly annoy critics of tab TV.

“A lot of honest people spent a lot of time and effort fixing in the mind of most viewers what news is, and these people are taking advantage of that and I resent it,” said former NBC chief Frank.

“The Elvis Files” airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Channel 5 in Los Angeles, Channel 6 in San Diego and Channel 63 in Ventura.