That’s Entertainment, Too : Sam Rubin, Laurie Pike Put a New Slant on Show-Biz Reporting

Talk about the news media being in bed with their sources.

Hollywood has long maintained a cozy, you-scratch-my-back relationship with TV news. News directors concede that it has been a case of newscasts using famous faces to boost ratings while the famous use the free exposure to hawk their latest project.

But Sam Rubin, entertainment reporter for KTLA-TV Channel 5’s morning news show, took the metaphor to new extremes when he literally climbed between the sheets with Roseanne and Tom Arnold during a recent interview.

Rubin and KTTV-TV Channel 11’s Laurie Pike are changing the face and the attitude of entertainment coverage on the local news.

“There’s never a dull moment with Sam,” said Warren Cereghino, KTLA’s news director. “He has taken a different approach to entertainment reporting. He’s in your face. He’ll poke fun at anybody. And that thing with Tom and Roseanne is just part of that. I don’t think it demeans the newscast or him. I think the audience understands it’s just Sam. It’s just part of his normal shtick.”

Shtick has long been a part of entertainment reporting, but it generally has been confined to gimmicks such as Gary Franklin’s “Franklin scale of 1 to 10.” The content of most local TV news reports on entertainment, exemplified by KNBC-TV Channel 4’s David Sheehan or KCBS-TV Channel 2’s recently departed Steve Kmetko, has mostly remained straightforward: reviews of movies combined with clips and upbeat interviews with movie or TV stars.

Rubin, 32, and Pike, 30, have made shtick, or at least their own unique personalities, the show.

“Most entertainment reporters really do what amounts to handouts from the well-oiled studio publicity machine, and we think the world is more interesting than that,” says KTTV news director Jose Rios, Pike’s boss. “Her only instruction has been not to be like all the other TV guys, not to dress like them or talk like them or pick stories like them. And I find her refreshing. I hope television is heading in that direction: Getting away from the Ted Baxters and closer to the Laurie Pikes.”

With her funky dresses, big earrings and red hair styled in a flip, Pike looks like she belongs on MTV, and her reports resemble nothing on any other station. While other entertainment reporters deal heavily in movies and celebrities, Pike generally disdains them. When she reports on a movie, it’s usually a small independent film. When she talks to celebrities, she’ll take them bowling.

Mostly, Pike wanders the city searching for pieces of pop culture that grab the attention of alternative weekly newspapers but never that of the local TV news. Since beginning at KTTV in June, she’s done stories on techno music dance clubs, erotic art at a swinger’s convention, the gay and lesbian film festival, an abortion rights art exhibit and women at “snooty hair salons” commenting on how humidity’s horrible effect on hair plays havoc with their emotions. “I always hated entertainment reporting because it was so puffy and covered stuff you already knew because everyone else was covering it,” Pike said. “I like giving you a guided tour of a scene that you probably have no idea is even there and that you will probably never go to yourself but is interesting anyway. L.A. is so gigantic and if you dig a little deeper than that glossy Hollywood thing, you’ll find little pockets of people doing weird and fascinating things. There’s books and art shows and photography and fashion and theater. L.A has a reputation as a town of flakes but you move out here and there is this great scene, this major renaissance in the popular arts that needs to be shown.”

Rubin is not nearly as hip and artsy as Pike. Much of his reporting is gleaned from news published in industry trade dailies or USA Today, and his tastes, as revealed in his movie reviews and the celebrities he dotes on, are rather conventional. But he maintains a bad-boy attitude toward almost everything he covers. He’ll do the outrageous and jump into bed with Roseanne, but he’ll also trash an actor or publicist by name if he or she is rude or snooty.

His favorite pastime, aside from talking about how the media are reacting to his and “The KTLA Morning News’ ” antics, is snickering at other TV news personalities. When former KABC-TV Channel 7 anchor Paul Moyer was taken off the air as part of a negotiating ploy last May, for example, Rubin instigated a “Paul Moyer Missing, Day 1, Day 2” watch.

Taking a cue from David Letterman, Rubin, who previously worked for Fox Entertainment News and the National Enquirer and currently offers a daily entertainment report for KNX-AM (1070) and gossip on “The Joan Rivers Show,” also makes up spoofs of entertainment stories just to be funny. When Joe Roth departed as head of Fox’s film division, Rubin offered a list of hot candidates to replace him that included KTLA reporter Ron Olsen and his bird Crackers, who are both big movie buffs.

“I do that because it is an important insider story and I want to put it out there, but at the same time a lot of your average viewers are not too terribly interested in it,” Rubin said. “So I try to explain why they should be interested and maybe sugarcoat it a little.

“Our whole show has a ‘tude of sorts, but I don’t think I have a deliberately smart-alecky or tweaky attitude. It’s more of a rolling my eyes a little and saying, ‘What is the deal with this?’ In movies, the good ones, I will trumpet to the hilt. But when you have a slew of similarly bad films like ‘Whispers in the Dark,’ ‘Consenting Adults’ and ‘Traces of Red,’ I’m going to say, ‘How dare they make us pay for movies like that. What is going on here?’ ”

Though she treats all of “the scenes” she encounters with a sense of fairness and often affection, Pike too maintains a slightly irreverent attitude, especially toward mainstream Hollywood.

“You definitely have to report some of this stuff with a grain of salt because with entertainment reporting you are not getting the real story,” said Pike, who worked as a gossip columnist and print journalist in New York before landing a job as host of several TV shows on pop culture that aired in Britain. “ . . . you have to include a touch of irony because these are rich and famous stars and you want to poke holes in them a little bit.”

While most of the other local stations continue to cover entertainment in the traditional way, some news directors believe the innovations of Rubin and Pike will spread. Indeed, KCBS-TV Channel 2 recently tried to hire Rubin but failed because, according to KCBS news director John Lippman, KTLA has offered him a chance to host his own 9 a.m. show. Cereghino would not comment on Rubin’s deal.

“I think viewers are tired of traditional reporting,” said Jeff Wald, news director at KCOP-TV Channel 13, who hired old-time film critic Gary Franklin but has promised to use him in different ways. “News is still news but the way the story is presented will change. You will see more opinions, more attitude, more questioning of the status quo, especially in specialized areas like entertainment reporting.”

“TV news has been so behind the times for so long, but I think it is changing and is now willing to take a chance,” Pike said. “There is amazing potential in reporters who look like real people, who talk like real people, who just aren’t so starry-eyed and polished and plastic. The only problem is sometimes it’s tough coming up with a fabulous new outfit every single day.”