Sweeps News: Someone Get Me a Broom

Swatting the Sweeps de Mayo. . . .

How can it be that worry over crime among San Fernando Valley residents is soaring--according to a recent Los Angeles Times poll--while the FBI reports significant drops in murders and rapes?

Take your pick of explanations, but the most credible one is the fear factor: Television’s relentless emphasis on violent crime--in talk shows, tabloid shows, “reality” shows, newscasts and prime-time movies--creates or feeds public alarm far out of proportion to real danger.

If you watch enough television, even Bosnia seems a safer environment than greater Los Angeles.

Of course, there are times when television’s outpourings of blood, gore and homicidal maniacs are motivated by humanitarianism. Sure there are.

“We’re doing it out of concern people might have for the Waco children,” said a KCBS-TV Channel 2 spokeswoman who phoned to promote an “Action News” series that has been running this week.

The title: “Manson Kids” or “Charlie’s Children,” depending upon which promo you hear.

The reporter: Harvey Levin, shown interviewing Charles Manson’s ordinary looking adult son, who was raised by his grandparents in Wisconsin.

It’s not a bad idea for a story but, typically, there’s been a lot of titillation here, not in content but in the way a slender paragraph’s worth of information has been teasingly dribbled out across several days, just to keep viewers watching and pump up ratings.

And some of the TV promos--”Meet Manson’s children tonight on Channel 2 Action News at 11!”--have featured scary pictures of the dreaded Charlie himself.

From fearsome to fluff, meanwhile, how would you like to be KABC-TV Channel 7’s Pam Thomson, unbagged during rating sweeps months to do squishy interviews on every ABC star within camera’s reach under the pretense of entertainment reporting? This week, Thomson has been getting “up close and personal”--as in promote the heck out of Channel 7’s entertainment programs--with the stars of the ABC soap opera “All My Children.”

Call it business as usual. Memorable for their no-brainer triviality, most tailored-for-ratings sweeps news series are good only for laughs.

Yet trivial hardly describes this week’s compelling KCOP-TV Channel 13 “Real News” series on cancer patients. Monday’s unhurried, remarkably honest segment featured the day-to-day video diary of a woman sharing her physical and emotional ups and downs prior to cancer surgery. It was painful, it was uplifting.

Nor was there anything trivial about last week’s strong yet balanced three-parter by Channel 2’s Levin on ravaged dairy animals slaughtered for their meat. Using undercover footage provided by the Farm Sanctuary animal rights group, he investigated the suffering of sick and crippled dairy cows destined for the slaughterhouse, showing how this appalling situation is not only inhumane, but also potentially damaging to the health of meat consumers.

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Newscasts and newscasters often have no conscience when it comes to incestuous self-promotion, especially during ratings sweeps. On Monday, for example, you could take it from KNBC-TV Channel 4 anchor Kelly Lange that “For the Love of My Child: The Anissa Ayala Story”--that evening’s docudrama on NBC--was must viewing.

The story was about a 19-year-old leukemia patient who underwent a bone-marrow transplant from a baby sister who was conceived for that purpose. The movie “brings it alive in every heartbreaking and wrenching detail,” Lange reported on the 5 p.m. news.

And whoa, it just so happened that Lange had done an interview with the actual family in Walnut for the 11 p.m. newscast, specifically for viewers like her who “can’t get enough of this story.” At a station break during the movie, she announced: “The family tells me things that will warm your heart.”

This was no time to be skeptical merely because Lange was endorsing her own cross-promoting story and a movie on the network whose Los Angeles station employed her. We have to trust these people, and learn from them.

If, like me, you can’t get enough of me, read on. Coming in the next item, additional wonderfully snide comments by me about Channel 4’s news, whose flaws I’ve detailed in heartbreaking and wrenching detail. I want to compliment me on another job of exquisite, graceful, perceptive, insightful writing.

Thank me.

I’m welcome.

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That incredible item on Channel 4 will be coming up shortly. But first, these brilliantly crafted cheap shots aimed at Monday’s editions of the syndicated “Hard Copy” and “Entertainment Tonight.”

“Hard Copy” typically took the low road in a story prompted by the publication of the new book “The Real Anita Hill,” letting author David Brock make personal attacks on Hill without rebuttal from her side. The show said Hill declined to be interviewed for the story. So, in addition to Brock, “Hard Copy” instead interviewed a doofus named E.Z. Million, who also lashed out at Hill.

Another segment featured footage of a Georgia State patrolman getting sideswiped on a highway by a hit-run auto. “Hard Copy” showed the sequence not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, not five times, not six times, not seven times, not eight times, but a whopping nine times--three in slow motion.

And in the searing-issue-of-the-day phone poll on “Entertainment Tonight,” viewers were urged to vote on whether they thought Elvis was dead or alive or whether they were “sick” of the debate about whether Elvis was dead or alive. “Your vote could make the difference,” John Tesh said, earnestly.

A better question: How many viewers are sick of “Entertainment Tonight”?

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Up next, that marvelous Channel 4 item, right after this extraordinary Channel 2 item.

A candidate for the most gratuitous live stand-up of the year: Channel 2 reporter Joe Avellar, at 11:15 one evening last week, outside the darkened house of a woman who earlier had survived being bitten by a poisonous spider.

A better candidate: Channel 4 reporter Patrick Healy, at 11:10 p.m. Monday, standing outside the Orange County Jail, where accused killer Mark Richard Hilbun was incarcerated.

“Some important new developments tonight,” anchor Paul Moyer announced with urgency. One was that Hilbun had been arraigned “today.” In the morning, in fact. The other development “tonight” was that Healy was now outside the jail, where, after introducing a tape package on the case, he divulged--live and exclusively for Channel 4 viewers--the dinner menu available to Hilbun and other inmates.

Sweeps.