RICHARD NIXON: 1913-1994 : News Organizations Descend on O.C. for Presidential Funeral : Coverage: Television, radio crews from around the world arrive in town for one of the biggest media events in recent history.

Move over Oprah. “As the World Turns” and “Days of Our Lives” junkies--brace yourselves. For two final days of glory, Richard M. Nixon will rule the daytime airwaves and little Yorba Linda will be become a sea of satellite technology.

As Orange County braced Monday for one of the biggest media events in recent history, news organizations from all over the world competed for access and major networks busily constructed tents at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace here to shelter anchors like Tom Brokaw and Connie Chung.

Across the street, producers paced Yorba Linda Boulevard, scribbling ideas for live camera angles--all in preparation for the first Presidential funeral since Lyndon B. Johnson died in 1973.

“This is the first funeral for a President in 21 years and the press is just going crazy,” said Gayle Anderson, Orange County chief of protocol, who granted four television interviews Monday between calls frantically placed to arrange the visits of foreign dignitaries.

The live coverage by all major networks begins today as the body of the 37th President takes off at 6:45 a.m. PDT from Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York and resumes as the plane descends at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station at 12:35 p.m.

Coverage will continue as Nixon’s body moves by motorcade to the library. There also will be full network and local television broadcasts Wednesday as he is laid to rest next to his wife, Pat, in a state funeral.

So sweeping is the media frenzy that one television executive compared it to the Los Angeles visit of Pope John Paul II. To a Coast Guard public affairs specialist fielding calls from reporters, however, Monday felt more like a major naval disaster.

“I’d say major oil spills kind of rank right up here with something like this--major oil spills or major marine disasters,” said Chief Petty Officer Rick Woods, who Monday fielded media calls from reporters from Japan to Britain and all over the United States.

“I’ve had a phone in my ear pretty much all day.”

At the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, doors opened at 10 a.m. Monday for the press credential scramble. By noon, they were all gone. That included 150 credentials for the arrival of the casket and 80 credentials granting access to the library as Nixon’s body lies in state Tuesday.

Press arrangements for the funeral, however, were still being worked out late Monday as the White House took over, said a spokesman at the base.

Left up in the air, some as-yet-not-credentialed photographers decided to camp out across the street from the library in hopes of a good shot.

For CNN, more than 100 staff people will work the event, including four correspondents and Washington anchor Judy Woodruff. Five lumbering satellite trucks from that one network alone are already in the area.

“We have 14 producers, where we normally would have five,” said David Farmer, vice president and bureau chief of CNN Los Angeles, which will use 14 cameras to cover the event.

“It’s frenzied, just to get people credentialed and gain access to sites and set up this extremely complex coverage situation on such short notice. We had people down there on Saturday vying for a spot,” he added.

The wet weather Monday didn’t help.

“We got alarmed today when it rained heavily. We’re just hoping very much that it clears up, for the sake of the journalists and the sake of the event,” he said.

Tom Brokaw is expected to fly into the area Wednesday morning and he will anchor the funeral live. For CBS, Connie Chung will do the honors in Yorba Linda, and for ABC, Ted Koppel will anchor the funeral from Washington, as correspondents Brit Hume and Jim Wooten cover it from here.

Jim Lehrer of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions will also anchor the funeral, although he will do so from New York City.

If not for the South African elections, all the key anchors would have come west. Both Peter Jennings and Dan Rather--who was CBS chief Washington correspondent during the Nixon Administration--will be on the other side of the world today and Wednesday, the networks said.

Ahead of the live television assault, about 30 reporters--some from local papers, others from national networks--hovered for cover Monday about noon as it began to rain at the Nixon library.

Admirers continued to trickle toward the front entrance to visit the ever-growing shrine of flowers, balloons and handwritten notes that surrounded the photo of the former President outside the front door.

Bewildered out-of-towners thumbed through a Thomas Bros. map book in hopes of deciphering the motorcade route between El Toro and the library. Correspondents filmed live stand-ups under umbrellas re-reporting the schedule for today and Wednesday.

All morning, reporters furiously dialed cellular phones or fired questions at anyone wearing the dark-green circular Nixon library lapel pin.

They wondered how they’d pipe extra phone lines into the tent during the funeral. They wondered where they’d park.

Most answers came quickly: “I don’t know yet.”

Charlyne Tsou, a news reporter for North America TV, a Chinese network based in El Monte, said the event will be “an international sensation. It’s a big deal at home, for both the Nationalists and Communist Chinese.”

Local television affiliates acknowledged that the live coverage will come with consequences.

“Oprah will not be on on Wednesday,” said KABC acting news director Becky Martinez, who expects calls from irate viewers, “and I would think that part of ‘All My Children’ might be affected.”

Times staff writers Jodi Wilgoren and Lynn Franey contributed to this story.

What’s on TV

How television will cover the events surrounding the Nixon funeral as well as the funeral itself:

* Casket arrival: The three major networks and CNN will air live special reports when Nixon’s casket leaves Stewart Air National Guard Base, in Newburgh, N.Y., about 6:45 a.m., and again when it arrives at El Toro about 12:35 p.m.

* Funeral: The networks, CNN and C-SPAN will provide live coverage of the funeral on Wednesday, which starts at 4 p.m.

* Local coverage: Most local network affiliates will begin programming an hour before the services.

* Public broadcasting: MacNeil/Lehrer Productions will broadcast the funeral live but does not plan live coverage of today’s events.

Source: Individual networks