Wilson Rates Scant Interest From L.A. Stations : Media: The full State of the State address is not broadcast live by any local television channels and only two choose to show it on tape delay.

Unless Los Angeles-area viewers understood Mandarin Chinese or were willing to stay up past 2 a.m., they missed seeing Gov. Pete Wilson’s State of the State address on television Wednesday.

“It is the only statewide speech the governor makes each year and, gavel-to-gavel, no one took it in the second-largest television market in the second largest city in America,” said James Lee, Wilson’s deputy press secretary. “Naturally, we were disappointed.”

Political scientists and mass communications specialists echoed Lee on Thursday, openly indicting the profit motive of Los Angeles broadcasters for what many experts characterized as public irresponsibility.

“I think the time is long past when we could ignore the State of the State address,” said Alan J. Wyner, head of the California studies section of the political science department at UC Santa Barbara. “The media need to put their profit motive aside for a time and, if not provide live coverage, at least provide it (on tape) in prime time.”

“The State of the State address is an annual catalogue of issues crucial to setting the agenda for what will be going on in the state,” said Shanto Iyenger, the acting chairman of the UCLA communications studies department. “Even if the entire transcript is printed in the next day’s newspaper, most people are not motivated to read it. I’m actually quite surprised that none of the local stations chose to broadcast it, but at that hour the local news programs do tend to be rather lucrative for them.”

Until just a few hours before the scheduled 5 p.m. speech, both the California Broadcasters Assn. and the governor’s press office said that three Los Angeles stations--KCAL Channel 9, KTTV Channel 11 and KSCI Channel 18--would carry the address live (as The Times reported in Wednesday’s edition, relying on information supplied by the association and the governor’s office).

But spokeswomen for both KCAL and KTTV reported Wednesday morning that neither station would broadcast the speech. KCAL was contractually bound to air a Lakers-Spurs basketball game at 5 p.m.; KTTV--which briefly considered airing the speech, according to one newsroom source--opted to broadcast its regularly scheduled “Tiny Toon Adventures” at 5 p.m.

The only Los Angeles station that did carry the 28-minute speech in its entirety was KSCI, which tape-delayed the broadcast to 6 p.m. so that station personnel could translate Wilson’s words into Mandarin.

Vic Biondi, executive director of the California Broadcasters Assn., said that all three Los Angeles stations reported to him in late November that they would carry the speech live. Biondi surveyed all association member stations on Nov. 22 to see if there was enough interest to co-sponsor and pay for satellite time in order to make the speech available throughout the state. The survey indicated that “every TV market was covered except El Centro,” Biondi said.

In reality, every TV market in California was covered except Los Angeles and El Centro.

“We were told that San Francisco might not air it, but at the last moment, KGO-TV did air the speech in its entirety,” Lee said.

“It may say something about what’s happening in Los Angeles,” he added, “in that the market is so driven by the economy and making money that not one station can devote air time to the governor’s speech at a time when the economy should be a major concern to every voter in the state.”

Biondi said that he didn’t know why KCAL and KTTV told him they would carry the speech and then didn’t. A KCAL spokeswoman said that she didn’t know who had sent the letter to him but maintained that the station never intended to broadcast the speech because it was committed to the Laker game. At KTTV, the employee whom Biondi cited as the source of confirmation told The Times on Thursday that he told Biondi only that the station would take the satellite feed and not that KTTV would actually air the speech.

Three other Los Angeles stations--KABC Channel 7, KNBC Channel 4 and KCBS Channel 2--told Biondi that they would either excerpt the governor’s speech or broadcast a taped version later in the evening. KNBC did broadcast the entire speech at 2:05 a.m. Thursday.

Both KCBS and KABC featured Wilson’s opening remarks at the top of their 5 p.m. newscasts, but quickly cut away to other news stories.