THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 28, 1995 TAG: 9509280050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
NOW THAT the O.J. Simpson trial has come down to the closing arguments, local Warner Brothers network affiliate WVBT plans to carry every word and picture beamed to it by satellite from NBC News and KTLA in Los Angeles.
The Virginia Beach station, which has a marketing agreement with local NBC affiliate WAVY, covered the trial in the past, only to cut away to regular programming (``Family Matters,'' ``Step by Step'') in the late afternoon. That has changed this week.
``You'll see all of the closing arguments,'' said Michael A. Mastrullo, WAVY's promotion and marketing manager - unless the Los Angeles Dodgers intrude.
On Tuesday, WVBT viewers saw almost everything of the first day of closing arguments. Almost.
WVBT stayed with the trial until 10 p.m., when KTLA gave in to pennant fever and cut away from the courthouse to bring its Los Angeles viewers the Dodgers-Colorado Rockies baseball game.
Christopher Darden still had another hour to go in the prosecution's summing up - an hour in which Darden suggested to the jury that Simpson was a bomb waiting to explode after his wife, Nicole, divorced and rejected him. For a while on Tuesday, it looked like there would be nothing to see on WVBT or the cable channels covering the proceedings live (CNN, E! Entertainment Television, CNBC and Court TV) or on any station anywhere in the world.
Judge Lance Ito interrupted prosecutor Marcia Clark soon after she began her closing statement to order the camera out.
He had decided that in taking a tight shot of Simpson passing a note to his attorneys, the camera operator violated the attorney-client privilege. Ito allowed the courtroom coverage to resume but not before he levied a fine of $1,500 against the television-radio association responsible for the pictures.
If he hadn't changed his mind, millions of Americans watching the coverage through their dinner hour and well into the evening - there is a three-hour time difference between Los Angeles and the East Coast - would not have heard Clark remind jurors of the ``ocean of evidence'' she says connects Simpson to a double homicide.
What about those size extra-large gloves - gloves worn by the killer, says the prosecution - that Simpson's hands did not easily fit into when he did a little demonstration for the jury?
Simpson was acting before the jury, Clark suggested.
``Mugging,'' she called it.
Simpson pretended that the gloves did not fit just as a child pretends that shoes or clothing the child dislikes do not fit, she said.
Clark, with dark circles showing under her eyes, appeared a bit weary as she began her presentation one year to the day after the trial began. The critics and commentators hired by the networks to help viewers through the legal maze were critical of Clark early in her presentation.
Ira Reiner on the NBC team was blunt, saying, ``She's not doing a very good job.''
Stan Goldman, one of the experts recruited for CNBC's ``Rivera Live,'' speculated that Clark hadn't slept for three or four nights and was operating on adrenalin.
While Clark may have started slowly, and stumbled a bit to the point of making up words (``wrongest,'' for example) as she went along, she made a nice recovery. Observers inside the courtroom said she had connected with the jurors. She was compelling Tuesday evening as she took jurors through the murders, step by step.
As the trial has progressed, the legal experts and commentators sharpened their blows. I'd like to see the ex-jocks who work as commentators on the football and baseball telecasts be as honest.
When Ito on Tuesday stopped the TV coverage, Greta Van Susteren on CNN called the judge stupid, adding: ``He's wrong. He took off on a silly issue.''
The finish to this ``trial of the century'' has created television too good to miss. by CNB