TV Carnival Presents Gavel-to-Gavel, Follicle-to-Follicle Coverage

Even before it started, it started.

“Take a look at the scene here,” said KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter Dave Barker at 6:58 a.m. Thursday, Day 1 of a preliminary hearing to decide whether O.J. Simpson will be tried for the murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Barker was near a thick ghetto of satellite dishes outside the Downtown Criminal Courts Building where the proceeding was scheduled to begin in two hours, televised live--gavel to gavel, follicle to follicle--by the big networks and every major Los Angeles television station but one.

Moses parting the Red Sea wouldn’t get this coverage. Another Channel 2 reporter, Pat Lalama, would later call it “the dissemination of information worldwide in a technological age.”

In other words, the carnival.

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The sounds of the technological age hurtled across the early morning airwaves like aimless Scud missiles. It wasn’t near 8:30, yet already on the Simpson vigil was KNBC-TV Channel 4 reporter Doug Kriegel: “We have just been told that O.J. Simpson will emerge from that building in. . . .”

Now the Channel 4 chopper’s overhead shot. “He was just put in the van,” said anchor Chuck Henry, “and he’s wearing. . . .”

Back to Kriegel, who sighted the white-and-black jail van carrying Simpson passing “our position.” The van turned left. “The van is obeying all the traffic signals,” Henry reported.

The van took another left. “How far are they from the courthouse?” Henry asked. “Oh, a block and a half,” replied chopper reporter Bob Pettee. “About a block now,” anchor Colleen Williams added. “And the van disappears into the court building,” said Henry.

Eight hours later, the Downtown chopper activity would resume, as stations covered the equally incredible story of the van returning Simpson to jail.

Well, America, you asked for it.

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The media are already attaching Roman numerals to each day of this preliminary hearing as if it were the Super Bowl. And come to think of it, the Super Bowl is the appropriate metaphor, with the nation and even the world tuned in, and apparently not knowing exactly why.

Are Inquiring Minds being manipulated? The astonishing interest in the Simpson-Goldman case does appear to affirm the media’s role as an agenda setter, not so much telling Americans what to think as what to think about . In this case, it’s O.J. Simpson.

Whether the fascination continues remains to be seen. Yet national ratings for last week incisively rebut arguments that some of the media are overestimating public interest in this relentlessly covered case. According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., eight prime-time news series that prominently featured the case or related stories gained substantially over their audience averages for recent weeks. Tops was ABC’s “Turning Point,” increasing its audience 50% with an additional 6 million households.

Even beyond the lure of the lurid, the case offers something for nearly everyone, whether it’s blacks who believe that Simpson is in jail because of his skin color or the poor and unempowered who see in his high-priced defense team a metaphor for a justice system that favors the rich. And for those who believe in the fundamental lunacy of the media, Simpson-Goldman works for them, too. That particularly applies to CNN, which has fed on this story like grunting hogs at a trough, noses into the slop, gratuitously putting on nightly specials and nightly audience call-ins: “Tell us how you would cover the story?” CNN asked one night. As if it really cared.

Meanwhile, there was Channel 2’s Harvey Levin at 8:45 a.m. Thursday, unfurling just-released documents like a victory banner, becoming the first TV reporter to reveal in detail why the police “suspect O.J. Simpson of committing the murders.”

What his drum roll led to, however, was not the expected preliminary hearing. In effect, it was an extension of an earlier evidentiary hearing on relatively technical forensic matters, a tedious exercise affirming that most legal proceedings, far from being exciting, are like high-rise elevators that stop at every floor.

It wasn’t until the actual preliminary hearing got going late in the afternoon that viewers got a taste of just how mesmerizing testimony in a sensational criminal case can be. All attention was on cutlery store co-owner Allen Wattenberg and his employee, Jose Camacho, who said that Simpson had purchased a knife from them May 3. The two also revealed that they had sold their stories to the National Enquirer, and Camacho complained about being pressured by the “tricky” media.

Meanwhile, local television turned every courtroom break into a burlesque wake-up call, polluting the airwaves (“Just to recap here,” Channel 4’s Williams began at one point, uttering the four words that make your heart stop) as well as the skies.

What’s this? Police activity at a vacant lot in Brentwood, reportedly midway between Simpson’s estate and the townhouse where Nicole Simpson and Goldman were murdered? Quick, men, to the choppers.

They didn’t know what they were covering, but they did know it was essential to cover it live. From the choppers, we could see not only police combing the vacant lot, apparently for evidence, but also some chalk circles they had drawn on the street.

Quick, to the ground. “It’s believed investigators have found bloodstains on the street here, Channel 2 reporter Marianne Kushi reported. But KYYV-TV Channel 11 reporter Rod Bernsen noted that the stains were brown, and only tests would determine if they were from blood. Bending over the chalk circles and pointing to dark spots, Channel 4’s Kent Shocknek couldn’t say at first “which of these marks are newer than others.” Then . . . a flash. “This does appear to be fresher.”

Fresher than much of the coverage, at least.