The Real Unsolved Mysteries

(Emulating TV, Calendar today begins a new, mysterious feature that readers will not want to miss.)

The following column contains re - enactments.

Sleuthing is getting to be big business on television.

Networks are doing it. Local stations are doing it. Obviously, this is no time to be left behind when it comes to public service. So today, we bring you the long-awaited debut of.

“CALENDAR’S MOST WANTED.”

(The host of this column is wearing a trenchcoat while humming the chilling music from “Basic Instinct.”)

We begin today with the cunning, the insidious, the diabolical. What other labels can apply to news directors behind incessant gratuitous live news chopper coverage of freeway chases? If you have any information on the whereabouts of a valid journalistic reason for live pictures of these chases that are increasingly cluttering the airwaves, or have any information that could lead to a hold being placed on such coverage, please call our hotline.

Meanwhile, what you are about to read is not pretty.

The following is a re - enactment of a conversation that never occurred.

Calendar: Does it make sense to break into regular programming to show viewers police chasing a suspect on a freeway?

News director: From a news perspective, no. After all, these chases occur all the time, so they’re hardly news. From a business perspective, though, the answer is yes. My motto is “Ratings first, integrity second.”

Calendar: Isn’t that cynical?

News director: Cynical, shmynical. Viewers like action, making them easy for low-lifes like me to manipulate. Car chases are action. That’s why you see so many of them in prime-time cop shows.

Calendar: Then you and the other stations are applying entertainment techniques to news?

News director: My other motto is, “Entertain ‘em first, inform ‘em second.” And, hey, don’t get so high and mighty. You’re humming scary music to hype this column, aren’t you?

Calendar: But aren’t you ignoring the perils of live television that allows you no editorial control over the material you are airing? What if, for example, one of these car chases ends, and as your chopper moves in for a close-up of the capture, there’s a bloody shootout in which many people die horribly? There’s no time to evaluate whether this is proper to show viewers in the afternoon, when children may be watching, if ever. It airs, gore and all, because it’s live.

News director: I love it. That’s show biz.

The preceding re-enactment was an accurate, thoroughly researched, meticulously documented depiction of a conversation that did not happen .

For every mystery, there is someone who knows the truth. Perhaps it’s your turn today. Call our hotline if you have information on any of the following:

* WANTED: A curtailment of that spreading virus, tabloid television, an apparently progressive affliction that, while surfacing now even in so-called legitimate programs, erodes and diminishes the medium.

* WANTED: A way to stop the mouth of overbearing ESPN basketball commentator Dick Vitale, who never met a game he couldn’t eclipse or ruin for viewers by continuously gushing extraneous information and loudly blabbering on and on about himself.

* WANTED: Local news commentators a la the late Bill Stout of KCBS-TV Channel 2, whose growlly opinions were noteworthy for their scope, texture and incisiveness. Given the enormity of some local news blocks, and the frivolous way they’re sometimes filled, room for commentary abounds. The Stout tradition is carried on these days only at KCOP-TV Channel 13, where Bill Press continues to be the class of the city’s slim field by delivering opinions, on a wide range of topics, that are biting and extremely well written and delivered.

* WANTED: Someone . . .

We interrupt “ CALENDAR’S MOST WANTED” for this live re - enactment of a violent chase in the Channel 2 newsroom involving co-anchors Bree Walker and Michael Tuck .

Walker: You %*&%!

Tuck: You $!%&*!

This has been a re-enactment.

* WANTED: Someone to persuade David Letterman to change his mind about stopping cable’s Arts & Entertainment network from rerunning his hilarious old shows during the day. Letterman argues that the reruns take the edge off watching his first-run shows on NBC. Not at all. Plus, they introduce him to a separate audience, one that may not be able to stay up late enough to watch him on NBC.

* WANTED: Another TV series for uniquely gifted Tracey Ullman, whose sometimes brilliant Fox show never attracted the size audience it deserved. Ullman’s current commercials for Britain’s Virgin Airways--her characters include a Jewish mother and a smarmy male Hollywood stereotype--are just a howl and only hint at her range.

* WANTED: A series worthy of former Letterman sideman Chris Elliott, an incredible straight-faced farceur currently entombed in the Fox series “Get a Life.”

* WANTED: A series worthy of Carol Burnett.

* WANTED: A hold on ambush interviews, whose purpose is usually not an interview but a rejection--preferably a slammed door or hand in front of the camera--that makes the intended interviewee appear guilty.

Well, that’s “CALENDAR’S MOST WANTED” for today.

Before leaving, however, we have this update: In an earlier paragraph of this column, we asked if there were descriptions other than “cunning,” “insidious” and “diabolical” that fit news directors ordering repeated gratuitous live coverage of police chases. Our hotline immediately began ringing, with readers offering such alternative labels as “unethical” and “dishonest slugs.”

The above column was a re - enactment of a previous column that was not published in The Times after being judged tasteless and uninformed.