Stories That Would Signal a Better Day for TV

Stories you won’t see in these pages any time soon:

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LOS ANGELES--Selig Flitwig, news director at KGNU-TV, announced today that his station will no longer provide helicopter coverage of freeway chases.

“We recognize that our audience share jumps each and every time we use our bird to cover these events,” Flitwig said, “but we also recognize that freeway chases are not news. Because they are boring and because we think we can better spend precious air time on stories that have real value to the community we serve, we’re abandoning our commitment to coverage of idiots who travel in circles and then stop traveling in circles.”

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LOS ANGELES--Officials at KCET will immediately begin designating advertisements airing on that station as “advertisements.”

“We feel it is disingenuous, at best, to assert that we are a noncommercial station when we air commercials that can be seen, and are in fact aired, on purely commercial outlets. There is no appreciable difference between an advertisement that airs on NBC and those that, for example, follow our broadcast of ‘Nightly Business News’ and precede ‘The NewsHour,’ ” a statement from the PBS affiliate’s management said.

“We air ads for cars and ads for financial services just like other stations in this market,” the statement said. “In the interest of fairness, we’re going to call them what they are. It is for this reason that ‘KCET Infinitely More’ will be changed immediately to ‘KCET-- Infinitely With Slightly Fewer Commercials That Don’t Interrupt Our Programs.’ ”

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NEW YORK--NBC will no longer generate “screen trash that intrudes on the creative work of talented individuals and production teams,” senior programming executive Sally Shimp announced today.

“I was in my den watching last week’s ‘West Wing,’ ” Shimp told reporters, “and I was astonished to find that, in the middle of a smartly written, thoughtfully directed and handsomely produced scene, an announcement for an entirely different NBC program unrolled across the bottom of the screen and danced around for a moment before it vanished.

“It is certainly important that we promote our programs,” the executive said, “but we ought to be more respectful of writers, directors, producers and those who support them. Screen trash insults those whose work is so good that we saw fit to pay for it, and air it, in the first place.”

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LOS ANGELES--Screenz R Us, the mega-corporation that has recently purchased two large movie theater chains in the western U.S., today announced a moratorium on all movie previews.

“We do not believe that those attending movies wish to see entire story lines incorporated into trailers that are screened before the feature,” said Shasa Fuentes-Shatella, communications director for the conglomerate. “It is our view that those attending movies do so to enjoy the full-length version, not minimovies that truncate plot and character development down to a version that rips the soul from the very product they are intended to promote.”

In a related development, Screenz officials have announced that they will screen cartoons prior to feature films at no extra charge.

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WASHINGTON--In a move designed to “enhance the coverage of news,” executives for National Public Radio will fine reporters who open any news story airing on the noncommercial network with a “soft lead.”

“The practice of launching each and every news story with ambient sound and a personalized lead, a practice that both obscures and trivializes the news, is henceforth banned from NPR,” said Waldo Whimpston, an editor.

“The next NPR reporter who leads a story about a major foreign policy initiative with a word portrait of a small child walking down an unpaved street over the sounds of local residents making wooden baskets is going to pay a $2,432 fine.”

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