For TV, Clinton Posed Cliffhanger Dilemma

News organizations regularly make tough choices, but Los Angeles television stations faced a cliffhanger dilemma Tuesday evening that compelled them to decide who was more important to their viewers: President Clinton or O.J. Simpson?

Station executives were ultimately spared the most difficult decision because the first verdict in Simpson’s civil trial came at 7:16 p.m.--a matter of seconds after the President concluded his address, allowing TV outlets to cover the speech nearly in its entirety.

Because stations weren’t sure when the verdicts would be announced, officials sweated out the speech in regard to whether they would be faced with two simultaneous news events.

The local CBS- and ABC-owned stations, Channels 2 and 7, went to a split screen shortly before the speech ended while staying with the audio portion. KNBC-TV, Channel 4, cut away moments before the State of the Union address ended.

“We always felt we had to go to the State of the Union,” said KABC-TV Channel 7 news director Cheryl Fair. “The challenge was trying to figure out how to service both stories at the same time.”

Fair said that Channel 7 executives decided they would not cut away from the president should the verdicts come amid his speech, as did the national network news operations. The plan was to run what’s known as “a crawler” at the bottom of the screen announcing the results.

As it was, there was virtually a seamless transition from the president’s speech to the first verdict. At the CBS newsroom in New York, officials heard staffers yelling “He’s guilty” just as the monitors showed the president saying thank you and moving away from the podium.

KCBS-TV Channel 2 also stayed with the president to the end.

“It was quite an emotional moment in the speech, and we didn’t want to take that away from our viewers,” said news director Larry Perret. “It was a tough call. . . . It was a dilemma. Thank goodness it doesn’t happen that often.”

Perret called the confluence of events “a real nightmare situation.”

“First of all, both of these stories are very important to us. But one of these stories is in our own back yard, so we really do have to look at that seriously in making the choice.”

Unlike the Big Three network-owned stations, KTTV-TV Channel 11--which had planned to carry the State of the Union address--opted to stay with Simpson coverage, as did local independent channels 5, 9 and 13.

“This is obviously a huge local story,” said KTTV news director Jose Rios.

KTTV, which is owned by Fox, did refer viewers who wanted to see the Clinton address to the Fox News Channel, a cable network available in a relatively small percentage of homes. Similarly, the CNN and NBC crawlers were designed to give the news, then direct viewers more interested in the Simpson verdicts to sister stations where the civil Simpson trial was the focus--CNN’s Headline News and MSNBC, respectively.

Given the split in coverage between the network-owned stations and independents, news executives suggested that viewers had no shortage of options. In addition to the ABC, CBS and NBC stations, the president’s speech was available on public television station KCET-TV Channel 28 and various cable news outlets.

“The truth is, if you wanted to see either, you had a place to go,” Rios said.

As the speech moved through its first half-hour, KCBS moved to a split screen as Simpson’s van moved toward the courthouse. Local anchors occasionally talked over Clinton, assuring viewers that the station would go to the verdicts as soon as they were announced. Before the speech started, KNBC told viewers: “We will have full coverage of the speech at 11.”

As zero hour approached, news staffers tried to anticipate their game plan while others gathered around monitors to watch the two events simultaneously.

At the network level, there was somewhat less hand-wringing in regard to cutting away from the State of the Union. “We never considered turning away from the president’s speech,” said ABC News spokeswoman Eileen Murphy. “We made the decision early on and there was not much debate about it.”

Still, the networks did fear that the verdicts would come while the president was speaking. Unlike CNN and NBC, which had the luxury of sending its viewers to sister cable stations, CBS and ABC had decided to keep their cameras on the president no matter what.

They also decided to do updates after the president’s speech, and then show the Republican response by Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.). However, NBC skipped the GOP response in favor of reaction to the Simpson verdict, at one point simply running the local KNBC feed.

White House officials acknowledged that they monitored the timing of the verdicts, faced with the prospect of being preempted on a key night for the president.

Clinton himself asked to be “kept apprised” of the situation, said White House spokesman Mike McCurry. Although rumors flew almost up to air time that Clinton might postpone his speech, the White House insisted that the president never considered doing so to avoid an overlap with the verdict.

“If it came right at 9, I said we could walk slowly into the hall,” McCurry said. “There was no serious consideration given to delaying.”

The president did briefly consider making a last-minute revision of his speech to include a reference to the verdicts, McCurry said. But as it became clear that the verdicts would not be known by the time the speech began, Clinton decided not to mention it at all.

White House spokesman Barry Toiv said no effort was made to get the court to delay the announcement. As it happened, the speech began late, following the traditional procession of the president’s Cabinet members into the hall, which was full of members of Congress.

“It’s true, O.J. verdicts come and go, but states of the union are about fulfillment of the Constitution,” McCurry said.

Even the Simpson verdict, he added, is “subject to the Constitution.”

Times staff writers Jane Hall and Eleanor Randolph in New York and Elizabeth Shogren in Washington contributed to this story.