News, schmooze . . .

Local TV reporting? Now that's entertainment!

by Richard B. Eckhaus

When it comes to local news -- morning, noon, or night -- Boston's television audience has more choices of content and flavor than a stray cat at the fish pier. A quick surf across the single-digit numbers reveals rolling waves of "breaking stories" and conflicting tides of subjective analysis. In a Nielsen pool the size of this city's, news attracts viewers -- which, of course, attract advertising dollars -- so local-news anglers are willing to try just about anything as bait. Switching from show to show -- and make no mistake, they are "shows" -- you have to wonder whether the news each station covers is from the same planet. Sometimes, it all seems like chowder. So what's a viewer to do? Hey, if you can't news-beat 'em, join 'em. Just sit back and be entertained.

Want something warm and toasty with your morning coffee? Punch up "04" and tune into "News 4 New England," the artists formerly known as WBZ-TV News. No matter what dire catastrophe befell humankind during the night, Joe Shortsleeve, Suzanne Bates, and Ed Carroll can make it more fun than a visit with Barney. And sometimes Joe and Ed get to have a few laughs themselves by confusing Suzanne with big words.

Sure, the name of the game's entertainment, but it would be wrong to assume that the morning edition of "News 4 New England" is too silly to deliver "hard" news. Just last week Suzanne reminded us that it was her news team who "broke the story" on BC coach Dan Henning's resignation. I'm going to feel sorry for Woodward and Bernstein when they find out that "breaking" a story requires nothing more than sending a camera crew to a news conference.

In a "News 4" commercial early this year, honeyed voices sang "Like a light in the windowwww" over the soft images of anchorpeople building a snowman and a leotarded entertainment critic joyfully whirling 'round. Cheerful journalists spoke lovingly of the stories of people, hope, and the Easter Bunny they'd soon be bringing. With this heartfelt plug and a secret weapon -- a news studio redesigned to look like a food court, "News 4 New England" unleashed an assault on the broadcasting high ground held by the Care Bears.

On 4, the evening trip to Happy Newsland begins at 5 p.m. and doesn't stop until CBS gives us Dan Rather's sour puss at 7. Anchors John Dougherty and Virginia Cha entertain us with chipper accounts of murders, burglaries, and fires, introduce jovial Bruce Schwoegler for a wacky look at the weather, then "go live" for each evening's top story: a traffic jam on Route 128. Tension unknown since radio's live reporting of the Hindenberg disaster was generated out of a recent remote from the kitchen of soul-food restaurant Bob the Chef's, where entertainment correspondent Joyce Kulhawik broke the story of a new menu. Oh the hominy, ladies and gentlemen!

"News 4 New England" won't lay down on serious consumer and health issues, either. Lauren Scott has used a hidden camera to prove that generic products are cheaper. And Liz Walker just finished a series exposing a terrible threat to our lives: germs. After exhaustive reporting, Liz concluded, "You have to wash your hands!" Alert the Centers for Disease Control!

If you're old-fashioned and want, as Joe Friday would say, "just the facts," you'll probably stop spinning the dial at WCVB, Channel 5. Far as it is from being the New York Times of the air, "Newscenter 5" (its catchy, ungrammatical motto is "Coverage you can count on" -- someone call Edwin Newman) is the closest thing we still have to real news programming. Anchors Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson, the Nelsons of the Nielsens, tend to stay with content and leave the small talk to others.

Does this mean that "Newscenter 5" is all meat and no filler? Hardly. Pass the Fluff Detector over 5's various Newscenters, Sportscenters, and Weathercenters and you'll get a strong reaction when you near Heather Kahn. Shortly before Thanksgiving, Kahn took us, via minicam, to her health club, where she recited the calorie count of a traditional turkey dinner while working up a sweat on the Stairmaster. As an anchorperson, pretty Heather can really turn on the vacuum. For example, while telling us all about the ugly racial incident at Texaco, she kept reading the name of the main offender as "Robert Urich," not Robert Ulrich. Now, Heather, doesn't poor Robert Urich have enough trouble already, with his battle against cancer and those embarrassing reruns of Lazarus Man?

No one shows more grit when it comes to staring down forces that seek to undermine everything decent in our society than WCVB's management do in their editorials. Child abuse? They're against it! A cure for cancer? For it. An end to world hunger? As soon as possible -- please! Talking-head drama gets no better.

Although the news day can begin gently over at WHDH, Channel 7, with motherly morning anchors Kim Khazei and Alison Gilman, watching the complete evening edition of "7 News" is like viewing a Hammer Films marathon. In no time at all, you're up to your ass in blood. With driving theme music, teasers like "Dangerous Drills -- We Look into Killer Cheerleading," and promos touting Boston's "most aggressive reporting," the folks at Channel 7 promise and deliver a couple of hours worth of murder and mayhem. When a woman's body is found amid rumors of a violent marriage, count on someone there to label it a "classic case of domestic abuse" even before the poky police get around to collecting evidence or making an arrest. If suburban brats blow up mailboxes with "acid bombs," ready your VCR because WHDH is going to tell you how to do it.

And their investigative prowess? Hank Phillippi Ryan is always ready to "go undercover" and expose the latest lipstick scandal. And how about Victoria Block's sleuthing skills? While doing a live remote from the crash site of TWA Flight 800, she comforted victims' families by "breaking" news of the recovery of dozens of bodies long before they had even been found. Just last week, with her hair disguised as a spiny sea urchin and armed only with rubber gloves, Block exposed a "fish fraud" in which unscrupulous market owners were caught substituting haddock for cod. Edward R. Murrow would have been proud.

Not even Susan Lucci can milk more schmaltz from a story than Channel 7's Christine Caswell. Recently she held us spellbound with the "mysterious disappearance" of a young Dorchester woman. The minicam zoomed in tight on the sobbing mother's tear-streaked face as Christine asked, "If your daughter is able to see us, is there anything you'd like to tell her?" Near the end of the program, we all sighed with relief when we were told the girl came home not five minutes after the segment had aired. The power of the media!

Caswell also had us the edge of our chairs this Thanksgiving night when, undaunted by icy rain, she reported "live" from the "scene" of a horrible crash in Sandwich while a medivac chopper anxiously idled in the background. Meanwhile, over on Channel 5, the honest-but-boring news team reported on the same tragic event but explained that it had happened hours before airtime.

Misleading? Fraudulent? No! Drama! Caswell only said she was live at the scene of the accident. What's next? Her coverage of the killing of five innocent civilians -- live from the scene of the Boston Massacre.

So what's happening in the minor leagues of TV news? You know, the local stations with channel numbers so high only dogs can hear them? Not much, I'm afraid. Channels 25, 38, and 56 now have "alternative" network affiliations with entertainment giants Fox, UPN and WB. But they still don't understand that news should be -- above all -- fun. And WABU, Channel 68, continues to play musical anchors while searching for just the right CPA to go with its Balkan-motif newsroom. Bor-r-r-e-e-ing! You gotta spend cash to make a splash. Dig?

By now everybody should know that the secret to the TV-news big time is show business. You want to compete with the majors? Listen up. Get a whiz-bang studio designed by George Lucas and hire an all-star team. Content schmontent! You need great-looking faces like Cathy Marshall and lantern-jawed sports guy Gene Lavanchy. For the glitzy job of entertainment, hire away Joyce Kulhawik and have her do what she does best: pose for the camera and ask Sly Stallone probing questions like, "How did you research this new character?" Need a meteorologist? None other than Boston's own Valley girl, Mish Michaels. I'd even make her a giant Colorforms map for her cute weather reports.

And you aspiring TV execs, remember that it's most important to act like a real news program. So buy the contracts of Victoria Block and Hank Phillippi Ryan and send those two down to Washington to uncover whatever they want. Maybe Christine Caswell could play the part of the intrepid, rabid reporter, and we might even get Stephen King or Robert B. Parker to pen her stories. Sure, "News To Knock Your Sox Off" would be mostly fiction, but when "Boston's All Gimmick News Station" climbs to the top of the Nielsen charts, who'd really care?