San Diego Spotlight : Local TV News Stations Lag in Entertainment Coverage

One-on-one “via satellite” with actor model Ken Wahl, KUSI-TV (Channel 51) entertainment reporter Fred Saxon asked the tough question.

“So what’s the new movie about?” Saxon inquired.

Wahl’s answer to that probing question was the only one Saxon used during that evening’s insightful and poignant feature segment on the hunk. A movie publicist’s dream, Saxon followed the give-and-take with a clip from Wahl’s new movie.

Though Saxon does little more than softball interviews with celebrities on publicity tours, he is the closest thing to a hard-hitting entertainment reporter in San Diego television, which says quite a bit about how local television news covers the arts. Saxon generally parrots entertainment news from the news wires followed by his own witticisms: After reading that actress Tyne Daley washes dishes to relax, he said, “She can come to my house and relax any time.” Saxon is the only local television personality assigned exclusively to do entertainment reports on a daily basis.

KNSD-TV (Channel 39) trots out dandyish Laurence Gross to do movie reviews once a week, and the other stations occasionally bring in guest “experts” to do reviews or provide some insight. But, for the most part, entertainment stories are relegated to the poor general-assignment reporter with nothing better to do.

That is certainly one reason why, when local television news does deign to cover local theater, music, dance and art, it is usually with a sophistication level ranking one notch that of above Gomer Pyle.

Typically, television news entertainment stories fall into one of four categories:

* The Anointment Feature: A television news station blesses a band, performer or production with a feature story. There usually is little noticeable rationale for which groups are chosen, though those featured in a recent newspaper article or those with a good press release seem to fare well.

* The Tourist Feature: Somebody interesting comes to town and the stations send out a photographer to videotape the event. (Theater and symphony openings fall into this category as well, though they are not out-of-town.)

Tape of no more than 30 seconds of the event is introduced by the anchor saying something along the lines of: “The Rolling Stones rolled into town tonight to rock the Sports Arena . . .” Tape usually rolls during the closing credits. If it airs during the newscast, the obligatory anchor banter almost always follows the pattern of this witty recent exchange between Channel 10’s Marti Emerald and Kimberly Hunt, after tape of a Kenny Loggins performance:

Emerald: “Great music.”

Hunt: “Yeah (sigh), I really like that.”

* The Freak Feature: Anything that will make the friendly anchor break into a knowing chuckle. Obligatory anchor banter will include, “Well, only in America,” and/or “Ain’t that something.” Most pop/rock bands more radical than Barry Manilow fall into this category, which includes celebrity marriages, drug-related celebrity arrests and anything involving Michael Jackson. These stories are usually taken straight from news services.

* The Plug: Usually a feature on a show carried by the news operation’s network. Or maybe an insightful news story based on a program that just aired, such as Channel 10’s in-depth coverage of Doogie Howser losing his virginity. This popular category also includes a variety of time-killers and video press releases on news entertainment products, new music releases and any other video offered up by industry publicists.

In other words, the typical television news feature comes across like the station recently arrived from Mars and developed a passing interest in entertainment. Considering that television has recently become a beehive of entertainment news, from “Entertainment Tonight” to the regular panel of gossip columnists on the “Joan Rivers Show,” local television news seems far behind the times.

“I will grant you there is some inconsistency” in coverage, said Channel 10’s Paul Sands, who, as the news director of San Diego’s top-rated newscasts, was called upon to explain the local televisions entertainment philosophy.

Because they are aiming for the broadest possible audience, entertainment coverage is often limited to stories that have broad appeal, simply due to the lack of air time, he said. They don’t have time to devote to regular reviewers or reporters on the various arts beats the way a newspaper can.

The sad reality is that a story on Guns N’ Roses will usually get more attention than a story on the symphony because there is broader interest in rock, Sands said.

“There will be a sizable group of people interested (in Guns N’ Roses), and another sizable group aghast and another sizable group that will be amused by the group,” Sands said.

That only partially explains the parochial, “gee whiz” approach accorded to almost every arts story. The reporters always seem to assume that nobody in the audience has ever heard of the topic, throwing in primer explanations like, “the group plays rock ‘n’ roll, a music popularized by the wild youth of the ‘60s and ‘70s . . .”

“I will plead guilty to being part of the mainstream,” Sands said, suggesting that most people are not aware of many different aspects of the arts. “We try to approach it as, ‘Here is a person we’re aware of, and it may interest you if you’re not aware of him.’ ”

Of course, that isn’t very helpful to those who might be at least slightly aware of the artist or event--i.e. the type of person who might occasionally read a newspaper or magazine.

What if you gave a town hall meeting and the town didn’t show up? Channel 8’s series of discussions last week, time-fillers for after the World Series games, attracted only a scattering of people for each show. Suffice to say, these type of shows depend on the audience for energy. . . .

Observers of the local radio scene wondering whether a shake-up of KRMX-FM (94.9) is due when the sale of the station is completed next month noted with interest that sales manager Terry Hardin, a longtime compatriot of KRMX General Manager Bob Visotcky, recently jumped to KCBQ. . . .

The local television stations gave the shoving match last week between a Valerie Stallings supporter and an aide to Bruce Henderson, her rival for a City Council seat, the type of coverage usually reserved for international incidents. The Stallings supporter called a press conference and suddenly television news was interested. Channel 10 took it a step further, re-creating the incident for the cameras with producer J.W. August, clearly bucking for a Hollywood job, in the starring role.