The Bluster Comes In on Two Fronts

Why I wouldn’t want to be a TV reporter in Southern California on a wet, blustery day. . . .

Well, not on any day, but especially a crummy one.

It was Tuesday morning. The winds were howling, the cats skittish and the rain pounded the roof so hard that I was jolted from a sound sleep.

The point is I was sleeping--as others were outside working--when out on the streets there arose such a clatter, I sprang to my TV set to see what was the matter.

“If it continues to keep raining like this . . ,” Debra Snell, in her hooded red parka, was reporting on KCBS-TV Channel 2 at 5:30 a.m.

“It’s really nasty,” red-slickered John North reported from Ventura on KABC-TV Channel 7. At least it appeared to be North. The severe weather made the pictures so blurry, it was hard to tell.

“We’ve been out here shooting since it was about 3,” he said. “We’ve driven up and down the coast. We’ve been as far as Mussel Shoals, where the wind is just whipping across.”

Tightly hooded in her yellow parka, meanwhile, KNBC-TV Channel 4’s Kimberly Plummer was reporting on conditions in Santa Barbara. “When we got to Cabrillo Boulevard here, there were trees down.” Cut to incredible pictures of crashing waves, then back to Plummer. “In the last 50 seconds that we were live, the power has just gone out all along State Street here.”

On KTLA-TV Channel 5, traffic reporter Jennifer York checked in from her usual post inside a chopper. Only she’d been grounded.

In Huntington Beach, Channel 2’s Dave Lopez was being buffeted by winds so strong (he tried in vain to keep his hood on) that the scene recalled the time CBS News anchorman Dan Rather lashed himself to a light pole to avoid being blown away while reporting on a hurricane that was moving in.

Tough duty.

Severe weather--that is, what Southern Californians define as severe--often brings out the best in local news. It’s that unusual time on TV when public service and technology are in unison, when live shots are justified and not deployed gratuitously as gimmicks, when the resourcefulness and physical efforts of water-logged reporters are to be admired. As are those of unsung camera operators who receive no public acknowledgment during these stories despite facing the same hardships as those on camera.

Experiencing a storm through the eyes and pictures of these TV crews--Channels 2, 4, 5, 7 and KTTV-TV Channel 11 did stellar work Tuesday morning--beats being there in person. Cut to Snell, for example, “soggy as can be” in the Sepulveda Basin, warning motorists to avoid that dangerous area.

Not that gimmicks don’t sometimes intervene. While covering a big storm a few years ago under different management, for example, Channel 2 reporters were ordered to shed their umbrellas, go hatless and hoodless and “get wet” while reporting outside in a downpour--the purpose being to create an aura of tenacity to impress viewers.

That came to mind Tuesday morning when, after first reporting from beneath their protective hoods, Plummer and Channel 4’s Rick Chambers in Malibu inexplicably reappeared several times bare-headed and drenched, Chambers once while describing the “stinging rains pouring along PCH right now” and Plummer at one point reporting: “I can’t believe how hard it is raining.”

Although Plummer later did rebundle up, Chambers kept that soaked macho stance through the early morning, even while interviewing one of many road workers who were all hooded up while operating in the area.

Under the business-as-usual category, meanwhile:

Even as the rain continued arriving in buckets Tuesday morning, so too did Channel 2’s unlabeled promos for the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, that it and CBS will be telecasting across 17 days and 128 hours, starting with Friday’s opening ceremonies.

The station has been crowding self-serving Nagano stories into all of its newscasts for some time. “It’s gonna be great,” exclaimed anchor Larry Carroll after one of them Monday night. “Sure will,” echoed co-anchor Ann Martin. “Gonna be great,” Carroll repeated, in case viewers didn’t hear him the first time.

So why would the scenario differ during Tuesday’s early morning rains, when Channel 2 managed to snare not one but two exclusive live interviews from Nagano with Jim Nantz, who will anchor CBS prime-time coverage, sandwiched around another with Channel 2 anchor Tricia Toyota, who is there on behalf of the station.

Here are some fragments:

“The excitement is definitely building up in Nagano . . ,” said Channel 2 anchor Paul Dandridge. He asked Nantz: “The popular sport there--is it skating?”

Nantz said yes. “It will be on for us 11 nights here.”

“It must be exciting for you,” Dandridge later said to Nantz. “I feel great pride being here and sitting in this chair,” Nantz disclosed.

“And CBS--tonight you have a broadcast?” asked Channel 2’s Sophia Choi, filling in for morning anchor Toyota after just returning from Nagano duty herself. Funny Choi should ask, for Nantz then proceeded to describe that night’s CBS special on the Nagano Games.

As Nantz advertised CBS coverage, something possibly historic happened when Channel 2 simultaneously ran a printed “crawl” across the bottom of the screen that said: “Welcome home to balanced news. Thanks for watching CBS2 news this morning.”

Was this the first double cross-promotion in the history of local news? Historians would have to verify that. Much more certain was that even after the rains stop, the downpour of hype will continue.