TAKING OUT THE TRASH ON ‘A CURRENT AFFAIR’

Today on the new “A Current Affair:” An old dog learns new tricks! It’s even housebroken!

This is the story of “A Current Affair,” which went and made some highfalutin promises to clean up its act, then--glory be--kept them. The result is an informative, entertaining daily half-hour (7:30 p.m. on KNBC in Los Angeles).

At a time when “tabloid TV” is a term critics brandish like a scarlet A, “Affair” proudly wears the “tabloid” label, and in so doing reminds the viewer what tabloid, at its best, can be: a tip sheet on the human condition.

The awkwardly titled but highly watchable “The New A Current Affair” has held true to the tabloid formula (human interest, celebrity and sin), then to that added investigative journalism.

The tone is slick but not glib, arch but not ugly. The show dares to be neither rude nor dumb. In short, this is a far cry from past “Affairs,” where the experience was less like watching something as stepping in it.

It was last spring that John Tomlin and Bob Young arrived on the scene to save the show they had worked for at its inception eight years earlier. The nation’s original syndicated tabloid show and long the ratings leader, the “Affair” they returned to was in dire straits.

Audience-wise, the Fox-produced series ranked far below newer rivals “Hard Copy” (Paramount) and front-runner “Inside Edition” (King World).

As for the content? Well, in its latest, perhaps saddest incarnation, “Affair” vowed to cover the O.J. Simpson mess and nothing but.

Then at a breakfast last June, Tomlin and Young told wary reporters that, come September, a new “Current Affair” would roar back to life. Goodbye, squalor. Hello, newsmaking exposes--about one every two days.

As the most telling symbol of its born-again virtue, “Affair” would no longer pay for interviews, at least without full disclosure to viewers. The show that claimed to have invented checkbook journalism had now stopped payment.

On Sept. 11, “The New A Current Affair” premiered, with former “Dateline NBC” correspondent Jon Scott as its anchor. It has never looked back.

Well, maybe there’s been an occasional over-the-shoulder glance, such as on a November edition that included a report on a child-sex ring, surveillance tape of a shooting in a pool hall and Anna Nicole Smith.

“We did say at the beginning, this will never be ‘MacNeil-Lehrer,’ ” Young notes.

On the other hand, yet another matter taken up on that same edition--a “date-rape drug” that frees inhibitions and is thus being used to seduce women--found its way last Saturday onto the pages of The New York Times--more than a month after “Affair’s” report.

Through late November, “Affair” remains third-ranked among tabloid shows, but since its relaunch has shown the greatest ratings growth. Meanwhile, if not necessarily rivaling “Frontline,” the investigative pieces on “Affair” have made waves.

When the show produced a story showing minors getting free cigarettes from R.J. Reynolds representatives, the tobacco company announced new steps to control its sampling promotions.

For another report, an “Affair” correspondent roamed, unchallenged, through the nuclear facility on the Georgia Tech campus. The hidden-camera footage exposed what appeared to be scandalously lax security measures, particularly with Atlanta the site of next summer’s Olympics.

Other stories have focused on an emergency room for pets; a young man keeping vigil on his fiancee, put in a coma by a car crash only hours after they were engaged; and bodyguards for businessmen in strife-torn Moscow--young, attractive, female bodyguards, that is.

“Don’t leave home without them,” Scott quipped after that last report. Seriously handsome and with a brow he hoists and tacks with every breath, Scott handles most of the purple prose essential to any tabloid show, no matter how “new.” Expect words like “shock,” “nightmare” and “killing spree” aplenty.

“This is a tabloid show, and always will be,” says Scott, “but that doesn’t have to mean sleazy.”

It sure doesn’t. On “A Current Affair,” life is a cabaret, old chum. Not a freak show.