No Thrills, Spills or Air Time

Most newscasters in Los Angeles are pathetic.

So pathetic that the mayoral duel between incumbent Richard Riordan and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) could earn genuine in-depth coverage on local TV only if it were to occur on freeways, with squad cars in pursuit.

That would hold the live cameras for at least an hour. To extend the coverage, Riordan and Hayden would have to jump from their cars, flee madly through backyards, hurdle fences, knock over trash cans, then be tackled by cops and transported from the scene in handcuffs.

News choppers naturally would hover as low as possible to allow TV reporters to read the candidates’ lips--you know, just in case they muttered something relevant about the election or other issues of great consequence to Angelenos. Newscasters who are the most serious about covering the news would seek the assistance of professional lip readers and perhaps even those gurus who specialize in interpreting body language from afar. Some well-chosen words from the Psychic Friends Network could add insight, too.

Chopper coverage of a mayoral election? Better than virtually no coverage at all.

Nothing is more symbolic of this stunning indifference than local newscasters’ couldn’t-be-bothered attitude toward last Thursday’s Riordan-Hayden debate that was shown live on Century Cable and rebroadcast on radio and KLCS-TV Channel 58, the Los Angeles school district’s channel. With only a couple of exceptions, TV newscasters dismissed this clash of mayoral candidates with the nonchalance of someone flicking lint from a lapel.

One exception was KCAL-TV Channel 9, which did the more responsible thing by running a videotape of the morning debate at 2:30 p.m. Another was KCBS-TV Channel 2, which, after advising viewers to set their VCRs, scheduled it at 3 a.m. Friday after a rerun of the Gordon Elliott talk show.

Astonishing!

Not that TV debates necessarily are a way to learn much about candidates beyond how well they communicate in glibspeak and deploy carefully crafted pseudo ad-libs and other catchy sound bites. And not that Thursday’s 27 minutes with the heavily favored Riordan and Hayden delivered anything pivotal, according to some who watched.

But it was something, at least--some scraps to fill a bit of the void.

Think about it. Local stations regularly lavish vast chunks of air time on those infernal cops ‘n’ robbers chases across freeways, some recently even giving vast live coverage to the pursuit of a motorist fleeing from being cited by police for allegedly driving alone in a lane designated for commuter pools. Such chase coverage often exceeds the 27 minutes consumed by the debate on Century Cable.

And most stations rejected giving equal time to Riordan and Hayden? That is appalling.

Way to go, KCAL, for running the debate. And exiling it to the wee hours, as KCBS did, was better than ignoring it. But can you imagine that station passing on live coverage of a cop chase and instead urging viewers to set their VCRs for 3 a.m. if they want to see it?

“We service an area that goes to 15 million people, many of whom are not affected by the Los Angeles mayoral race, nor do they have an interest in it,” KCBS news director Larry Perret said last week.

Come again? The Los Angeles mayoral race is not a big story for Los Angeles stations?

Newscasts are as profit-oriented as newspapers. The more viewers or readers, the higher the advertising rates and the greater the profits. But if you’re in the news business, you report some stories solely because it’s in the community interest to report them, even if they aren’t especially sexy or an automatic turn-on for viewers.

This will sound musty and archaic, but you do them because it’s right to do them.

In any case, Perret’s lame excuse--which no doubt is echoed in other TV newsrooms--has not stopped stations from giving wide coverage to other matters that bear the city’s stamp, including the Los Angeles Police Commission’s recent decision to reject Chief Willie L. Williams for a second five-year term. So why this exclusion?

Only last month, meanwhile, KNBC-TV Channel 4 cut to Mesa, Ariz., of all places, for extensive live coverage of two brothers, ages 17 and 10, being rescued from atop a 120-foot power tower. The initial pictures, accompanied by obligatory anchor babble, straddled two newscasts in a 21-minute slab of coverage broken only by a worshipful feature, of an additional three minutes, on Rosie O’Donnell, the comic who hosts a popular daytime talk show that airs on KNBC preceding the news. Yes, had to get that in.

Later in the same newscast, the station added another six minutes of live coverage from Mesa, raising the total to 27 minutes--the same length of the Riordan-Hayden debate, an event that KNBC granted about a minute of taped coverage last week.

Twenty-seven minutes of live TV for Mesa, none for local mayoral candidates? Local newscasts have been virtually ignoring state government in Sacramento for years; why should they be any more interested in the infrastructure of Los Angeles?

Unless, of course, the action is on a freeway.