Star Power, Unusual Election Attract TV Networks

After weeks of channeling his message largely through scripted campaign events and the prism of entertainment television, Arnold Schwarzenegger began actively courting the major TV news organizations in the end days of a campaign in which news and celebrity journalism were mingled as never before.

In the only broadcast network prime-time interview he’s granted during the campaign, Schwarzenegger, who is facing several potentially damaging late-in-the-campaign press reports, carved out 30 minutes Sunday afternoon on his campaign bus to talk to NBC’s Tom Brokaw. The report, in the works since at least Thursday, aired on the prime-time newsmagazine “Dateline.”

It’s not a surprise that NBC scored the interview, because as Brokaw acknowledged in his report, he is an old personal friend of the actor and his wife, Maria Shriver, a “Dateline” correspondent now on leave. He also played a role in introducing the couple in 1977.

Despite pointed questioning from Brokaw about allegations that he had groped women on movie sets and elsewhere, Schwarzenegger stuck largely to the same message he has given in recent days, acknowledging past “crazy” behavior but declining to go into specifics.

Schwarzenegger was also seeking an even bigger audience. Late Friday night, his staff approached CBS’ newsmagazine “60 Minutes” -- which airs opposite “Dateline” and routinely attracts more viewers -- and asked if producers wanted a Sunday interview. After discussions on Saturday, in which CBS officials expressed a desire for an exclusive interview, the Schwarzenegger campaign called back and said they had changed their minds, a CBS News spokeswoman said.

Also Saturday, ABC’s Peter Jennings, who like Brokaw is in California from New York, interviewed Schwarzenegger on his bus for about 30 minutes as they rode from Modesto to Pleasanton. An ABC News spokeswoman said that interview had been arranged Sept. 26, well before the women’s charges were made public. Portions aired Sunday on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” and more will be seen on tonight’s “World News Tonight.”

In addition, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews got an interview with Schwarzenegger on Thursday, after a week of requests to his campaign staff. After a Costa Mesa campaign event at the Orange County Fairgrounds, Matthews and his crew were shuttled 500 yards away from the surging crowd of reporters to a deserted area, where the “Hardball” anchor interviewed the candidate for about five minutes.

The major networks all have had reporters on the California recall beat for months. But the recent arrival of the major players in the East Coast media corps has swelled the already bulging journalist pack. What’s more, the 70-camera gridlock at some campaign events has another component -- the entertainment journalists who, like the rest of the media, have been attracted to the recall race for its irresistible mix of celebrity and political precedent.

So at the same time Schwarzenegger was talking to ABC, “Access Hollywood” was touting its own “exclusive” interview with him, while “Entertainment Tonight” made plans to broadcast Tuesday from his campaign plane.

Arianna Huffington bowed out of the race on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” but Pat O’Brien of “Access Hollywood” had the first interview with Schwarzenegger after he announced he was entering the race on NBC’s “Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” In mid-September, Oprah Winfrey scored a major interview with Schwarzenegger and Shriver. Until recent days, Schwarzenegger’s only major news interview had been with King.

Competing with O’Brien for interviews is just “characteristic of the strangeness of it all,” said Jennings, relaxing briefly Friday after anchoring the news for East Coast viewers from ABC News’ tiny set in Los Feliz.

Nonetheless, “we are covering this exactly the same as if it were a presidential campaign” in terms of staffing and logistics, said Mark Halperin, ABC News’ political director. So much so that a new five-network exit polling system will get its first test run Tuesday, a tryout for the 2004 presidential election. The old setup was scrapped after it failed in 2000 and Al Gore was prematurely -- and incorrectly -- called the victor.

On both local and national TV outlets, the recall news will be extensive. NBC sent so many of its star anchors -- Brokaw, Matthews, Tim Russert, Brian Williams, Katie Couric, Campbell Brown -- that it ran out of studio space in Burbank and had to repaint a conference room so Russert could squeeze in. The confluence of media worlds made for some odd moments last week.

There was Bo Derek, sharing a makeup room with candidate Tom McClintock on the set of “Hardball” Tuesday.

“I like to think [the media] are all here because it’s an important issue and not just because of Arnold Schwarzenegger,” said Derek, just before slipping into the guest chair. She doubts it, however.

“But it’s not their fault,” she added generously: “It’s what the viewers want to see.” Indeed, while Derek was discussing the election with host Matthews, noting, “I’m just a Californian,” MSNBC’s captions chronicled the “10” star’s life history, from the fact that she was the oldest of four children to her start in modeling in Hawaii at age 15.

For one news outlet, the coverage from the “left coast” is a rare turn. Rather’s “CBS Evening News” has had its bureau correspondents covering the recall, but the show is making its first full-fledged visit here since before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The visit by an anchor guarantees more attention in a broadcast in which all the world’s news must share just 22 minutes a night.

Rather, who starts anchoring here Tuesday, comes to California often to do reporting for other programs, but for the evening newscast, “it’s been years,” said Jim Murphy, the show’s executive producer. “We haven’t had a news reason for being there,” he said from New York. Murphy is one of the few national media figures who say they “may be overdoing it a little” in their recall coverage, but he still thinks it’s a good story -- “an 11 on a 1-to-10 scale for California, and a 7 on a national scale.”

By contrast, Jennings is on his third “World News Tonight” anchoring trip to the state since December. “There’s no question that Schwarzenegger’s presence in this race supercharges the national media’s interest,” Halperin said. “But one in every seven Americans is a Californian,” he said, which means “one in every seven of our viewers.”

Jennings rattled off a list of reasons that he quickly decided the story was “more than a circus,” from the general voter dissatisfaction with “business as usual” to the intense interest in “personalities, come what may.” He said Schwarzenegger is one of many populist candidates who have been successful in recent years, a list that includes former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura (the onetime professional wrestler, who had his own interview with Gov. Gray Davis on his new MSNBC show Saturday).

Brokaw of “NBC Nightly News,” who has maintained close ties with California since his early-career stint at KNBC-TV Channel 4, anchored from L.A. as recently as the beginning of last month.

“There are some very interesting characters here and the stakes are enormous: It’s a huge economy facing the same kinds of issues virtually every state in the nation is facing,” said Steve Capus, executive producer of Brokaw’s news program. “Schwarzenegger made it a more interesting story, but it was still an incredibly compelling story before he got in.”

“There’s an ‘Is this really going to happen?’ component to this election,” said NBC’s Williams, Brokaw’s designated heir. “Recall is the threshold, the triggering device, the bright line California is about to cross.”

Historically, both TV and print reporters from outside the state have told three stories about California, said Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at USC: “Paradise lost,” “Kooky California” and “They’re not hicks after all.” The recall, he said, “gives them two out of three. It’s kooky and the national spin seems to have been that it’s unfortunate.”

Resentment over how East Coast media cover California isn’t new, but Jennings thinks there’s also some selective viewing that takes place. “We come here to deal with [such stories as] resource management, and urban development,” he said. “But Californians tend to notice us [only] when we notice the quirky things about California.”

It doesn’t help that for logistical and financial reasons, the broadcast networks frequently serve up three-hour-old newscasts to their West Coast viewers. That has changed in recent weeks, as the West Coast feeds of the morning shows and nightly newscasts have been updated almost daily, due in no small part to the unpredictable shifts in the continuing story of the recall.

There’s no doubt, however, that the East and West coasts don’t always see issues the same way. Of the East’s current preoccupation with the investigation into who leaked the name of a CIA agent, O’Brien said on the weekend “Chris Matthews Show”: “You guys in Washington think it’s the biggest story, but out here, no one cares.”

Nor does everyone care that it’s an actor who is drawing all the attention to California; they’re just happy that local politics is getting a forum instead of its usual brushoff. Local TV in particular “has done a great disservice in not covering politics,” said Matthews, and “this has brought it all back. Anything that gets people interested in politics is good.”

The point hasn’t been lost on the Democratic presidential candidates, who have seized the opportunity to campaign in the state with the California candidate of their choice and snag some precious TV visibility. At this point in a normal election cycle, ABC’s Halperin said, the candidates could “climb [San Francisco’s] Coit Tower and light themselves on fire and not get coverage.”