Fox Takes a Non-Standard Approach to Clinton Speech : Coverage: The network will air the address at 11:30 p.m., followed by a discussion among college-age students from the Washington area.

Fox Broadcasting will be joining the more traditional sources of ABC, C-SPAN, CBS, CNN, NBC and PBS in carrying President Clinton’s speech before a joint session of Congress and the Republican response tonight.

But in keeping with Fox’s goal of being an alternative, its coverage will have several twists setting it apart. The biggest difference will be the time it is shown. Instead of airing the addresses live at 6 p.m., Fox’s KTTV-TV Channel 11 will delay them until 11:30 p.m. Channel 11 will stick with its normal early evening lineup of “Married ... With Children” at 6 and “The Wonder Years” at 6:30.

“We felt that there really wasn’t much purpose of being the sixth network to carry it (live),” said Paul Amos, executive vice president of the Fox News Service. “We felt we would stand a much better chance of getting people to watch something different if we aired it at an alternative time period.”

Amos said another reason for Fox’s later coverage was to serve viewers in the Pacific time zone who are at work or commuting at 6 p.m. and are unable to watch.

Fox will gear its coverage to its core audience of 18- to 34-year-olds, a group that traditionally has tuned out news and public-affairs programming. Following the speeches, Fox will air a taped discussion among college-age students from the Washington area.

To help build an audience, Fox will be running public-service announcements featuring stars of its youth-oriented prime-time series, “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Melrose Place,” stressing the importance of the speech.

News has played a minuscule role at Fox since the network’s founding in 1986. But its role will be growing larger.

Fox hopes to premiere a prime-time news magazine in early summer. Van Gordon Sauter, a former CBS News president, was hired in July as president of Fox News. Along with developing the magazine, Sauter has been assisting Fox affiliates in launching and improving their local newscasts.

“(The coverage of tonight’s speech) obviously is an evolutionary step,” Amos said. “We’re gradually laying the foundation for what will ultimately be a broad-ranging news effort. The approaches that we take are likely to be very different than what you find on the traditional networks.”

Fox is not the only network to take a non-standard approach to its coverage of the speech.

CNBC will show the address, then will have Tom Snyder and guests field viewer calls until 8 p.m. C-SPAN also plans to take viewer calls until 8:30 p.m., then will replay the speech.

CNN will not only have its own correspondents provide analysis but also will present a round-table discussion among what it is billing as “representatives of different voting groups.” CNN has also scheduled a replay of both speeches for 10 p.m.

KMEX-TV Channel 34 and KVEA-TV Channel 52 will both have live, Spanish-language coverage at 6 p.m.

Los Angeles-area radio stations planning live coverage at 6 p.m. include KABC-AM (790), KCRW-FM (89.9), KFI-AM (640), KFWB-AM (980), KNX-AM (1070) and KPCC-FM (89.3).