Chase TV: That’s Entertainment!

Critics can take their shots at KCBS-TV Channel 2 for showing the aftermath of a car chase during President Bush’s speech last week, but I happen to think it was a hallmark moment for television news in Southern California.

It seems we can barely get through a week this summer without a televised chase or three. But this one was special.

If you missed it, KCBS broke up the screen to show a highway face-off in a bottom-right window while Bush delivered his thoughts on embryonic stem cell research.

I could write a hundred columns and not reveal as much about Los Angeles as KCBS did in those 15 minutes, and I’m not too proud to admit it.

“Our reasoning was that a lot of people wanted to watch the chase, and a lot of people wanted to watch the president,” says KCBS news director Roger Bell, who conferred with his general manager before they made their big decision. Now you know why these guys are paid a king’s ransom.

I often hear people say they’re tired of watching chases, but these are the same people who claim it takes them 20 minutes to get to work. My money says they’re all planted in front of the tube with tubs of popcorn, waiting for the next goofball to hit the highway with a cop on his tail.

Then you’ve got the snobs who sniff that car chases eat up time that should be spent on serious issues. What kind of moron watches local news for serious issues? It is what it is, and KCBS has now established itself as a pioneer.

If they want my two cents’ worth, I’d drop the weather altogether--it’s not like we need a talking toupee to tell us it’s going to be warm and sunny again tomorrow--and expand chase coverage. This would include highlights of past chases and updates on what happens to these bozos after the jig is up.

You can’t argue with the numbers, and Bell says Channel 2’s viewership jumped by more than a third during Bush’s speech. He says the network affiliates that dropped the chase hit the skids.

My only quibble is that I would have gone big with the chase and squeezed the president into the corner box. Bell says a reversal was in fact “a momentary” consideration, but he and General Manager David Woodcock ultimately nixed the idea.

Huge mistake.

You could have found the Bush speech on half a dozen other channels. Besides, everyone knew he was going to find some mushy, politically safe middle ground.

But we didn’t know whether the guy in the Suburban was going to come out with his hands up, or eat up a little more of the Ventura Freeway before the inevitable face-to-the-pavement climax.

I’m not too sure I wouldn’t have reversed the audio priorities, as well. You would have seen Bush’s lips moving down in the little squeeze box, but you would have heard someone else’s voice, as if the president were a wooden dummy.

“We’re in love with cars, we’re in love with freeways, and we’re in love with seeing something unscripted happen before our very eyes,” Channel 2’s Bell says. “The curiosity is similar to the curiosity we have when we watch a show like ‘Survivor’ or any of the other ‘reality’-type shows.”

Exactly. Except that we’re all qualified for the job, which is why we have so many car chases.

Some shlub with a remote control and a bag of Chee-tos will plop down on the davenport to watch “Married: With Children” or some such, and the news will break in with a chase.

Look at this, Joe Sixpack mutters as his wife yells for him to get off his duff and go get a carton of milk. This guy’s live and in living color, and I’m running errands.

So there he is at the 7-Eleven, where he grabs the milk and makes a run for it. Before he gets to his car, there are more helicopters in the sky than Vietnam saw during the entire war.

It’s his big chance, and he’s ready. Having just filled the tank for precisely this moment, he’s good for four hours of air time.

I’m always disappointed in the police, though, given their reputation for tuning people up. Here’s a situation where you want them to flex their muscle and ask these poor hacks what in the world they were thinking.

Instead they’re driving at the properly prescribed number of car lengths for optimum safety. And when the driver realizes there’s an outside chance he might not get away, given the fact that he’s live on five television stations and he’s being followed by everyone but the Blue Angels, all we get from the cops is restraint.

There’s nothing funnier on television, and if not for the fact that the drivers are always so strikingly unattractive, someone would have had a William Morris agent and a six-figure development deal by now.

Not too long ago one driver must have consulted a PR firm, because he crashed through the gates at KTLA. This began a slow-motion chase in which he practically held a press conference along the way, and had one pedestrian light him a cigarette and another pass him a drink.

The guy apparently thought he was in the Rose Parade, and the cops later flipped, accusing the media of turning a chase into a circus. After making sure to show every possible inch of the so-called chase, KTLA’s Hal Fishman delivered a terse retort under a “Commentary” graphic.

The cops ought to take out these scoundrels as rapidly as possible, Fishman intoned, and penalties for the miscreants ought to be stiffened. I believe he hit on every possible car chase deterrent but one:

Stop televising them.

Thank God for that. I’m on my way to the parking lot, my tank is full, and tonight could be my night.

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com