THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 22, 1995 TAG: 9507200062
SECTION: TELEVISION WEEK PAGE: 01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
AMONG THE NEW and exciting things I learned about television during a two-week visit to this Land of Glitz is that a school for anchormen and -women - Ken and Barbie U. - is up and running in America's heartland.
That fact was revealed by the producer of a four-hour ``Investigative Reports'' special which begins Sunday at 8 p.m. on A&E. The host is rock-solid Bill Kurtis.
It's called ``Naked News'' because in it, producer Nicolas Kent lays bare the processes that make talk radio, TV news, including CNN, and the gossip columns in big-city newspapers and supermarket tabloids so darn irresistible to millions.
Kent similarly undressed the movie-making industry in the recent documentary ``Naked Hollywood.'' Now the British producer takes four hours to show viewers how cable television's Ted Turner, talk radio's Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy, and a man you probably never heard of before - Frank Magid - help to shape the look and feel of broadcasting in the 1990s.
The fourth segment in this ``Investigative Reports'' special after ``The Anchors,'' ``The Tycoon'' and ``Talk Radio'' is ``The Tabloid,'' in which Kent shows how a Manhattan tabloid (The New York Daily News) is struggling to continue publishing in a competitive marketplace - so competitive that a tabloid with a circulation of 216,000 and three Pulitzer Prizes, New York Newsday, recently folded.
``There are things in this special that are uniquely American,'' said Kent, an Oxford grad who has done more than 25 documentaries for the BBC. ``We have nothing in my country to compare to your talk radio. And on television, the star system of American anchormen and women also hasn't happened in the United Kingdom.''
Kent is at his best on A&E when he carries his audience to Frank Magid Associates in Iowa where Kent proves that anchors are not born but made. Most compelling is his profile of a thirtysomething anchorwoman in York, Pa., who is being groomed and shaped by the Magid people and her agents to crash a major TV market.
``This is Ken and Barbie journalism,'' says ``60 Minutes'' producer Don Hewitt to Kent.
``It's like Noah's Ark. One man, one woman. Ken and Barbie journalism is happening everywhere in America. It's time for television to raise its sights a little.''
Walter Cronkite also checks in to denounce ``the so-called local Action News presentations that are total perversions created from outside by consultants.'' Was he pointing a finger at Frank Magid Associates, which has advised stations in Hampton Roads on how to do local news?
Kent describes the Magid approach as the ``Hollywoodization'' of local TV news. ``Out of market research, in which people are asked who they want to see on television, has arisen the whole phenomenon called Ken and Barbie journalism. It's cosmetic actors reading the news without any weight of journalism behind them.''
Kent points out that local stations are not the only ones to use a pretty face to keep ratings up. Didn't CBS pull a similar stunt two years ago with Connie Chung, now lost in limbo at the network?
``The lines between news and entertainment have become blurred as never before,'' said Kent. ``It is ironic to hear Walter Cronkite say he despises the star system in television news because he fathered that system. He became the first network anchor to be lionized.''
Kent took his cameras on down to Atlanta, to the offices of CNN founder Ted Turner, who didn't mind saying that wars were good for business, seeing how they elevate CNN's ratings.
In a smashing coincidence on the semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour, Turner himself was on hand after Kent and A&E made their ``Naked News'' presentation. It was as if he leaped out of Kent's documentary.
Turner visited with the TV press to give a sort of state-of-the-union report on Turner Broadcasting. Right off the bat, he said he supported the call in Congress for a ``V chip'' device that would curb violent and distasteful programming before it enters the home by way of cable or satellite.
``With hundreds of channels about to come into people's homes in the future, parents should be able to have available to them a button to push that keeps gratuitous violence out of their living rooms,'' he said.
Turner also entertained the press when he did a little dance with Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who will soon be seen in a TBS special (``Cousteau: My First 85 Years'').
Turner, said Kent after spending hours with him for the A&E piece, is a candid man, and that is sometimes to his disadvantage. ``He often says whatever pops into his head.''
And not even his bride, Jane Fonda, tugging at his sleeve, can stop him. MEMO: Television Columnist Larry Bonko is in Los Angeles for the twice-yearly
Television Critics Association press tour. by CNB