DATE: Monday, July 14, 1997                 TAG: 9707120056

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Larry Bonko 

                                            LENGTH:   88 lines

COX HIGH GRAD BEVERLY KIDD STEPS UP AT WTKR

LOCAL TV NEWS and views to ponder while you wait for Beavis and Butt-head to begin a seventh season on MTV Friday night at 10:

Early to bed, early to rise - Six years ago, she was just a part-time tape editor at WVEC. Today, Beverly Kidd is WTKR's new Miss Sunshine - co-anchor of ``News Channel 3 News This Morning.''

Kidd replaces Ann Keffer on the 5:30-9 a.m. shift.

Keffer's new job is anchoring the nightly 10 o'clock newscast that WTKR produces for WGNT. It's Keffer in for Tom Randles and LeAnne Rains, who still have their jobs as WTKR's co-anchors at 6 and 11 p.m.

This is the first big move made by

recently appointed news director Michelle Butt.

Kidd, 31 and divorced, is local talent - Cox High School class of 1984. She was a cheerleader there. Kidd, who had been working the dawn patrol weekends at WTKR, says she doesn't dread the sound of the alarm at 3 a.m. Not really.

``I'm fine after the first cup of coffee,'' she said.

Kidd's assignment on Saturday and Sunday ``This Morning'' shows goes to Lisa Godley, a Norfolk State U. graduate who's been working in Louisville. Also arriving soon from West Virginia to report weather on the morning shift is Dave Parker.

He also has a local connection - high school in Virginia Beach.

``We'll have a good local sense of the news,'' said Kidd. And they will pronounce ``Norfolk'' correctly. Kidd already knows that it's not ``Nor-fik.''

More coming and going - Carol Horton, who along with Duane Harding and Jim Hale was let go when The New Times Co. bought WTKR, has ended her TV comeback with WAVY.

Horton, an assistant editor at the Port Folio news and opinion magazine, says she's tired of working six days a week and checking in before dawn to report weather for Channel 10's Saturday morning newscast. And I thought it was because uninhibited anchorman Andy Fox drove her nuts.

Also at WAVY, former Navy journalist Kerri Mattson has come aboard as a general assignment reporter from a station in El Paso, Texas. Mattson served in the Navy five years, including a hitch with Navy-Marine Corps TV news.

Here's one local TV reporter who won't refer to a deck as a floor, a hatch as a door and a ship as a boat.

Hammered - Do noisy TV commercials in which lawyers hustle for business - ``We hammer to get your money!'' - offend viewers? In an Infoline poll in which 126 readers took part, 110 said they don't like the attorneys' hard sell.

To another Infoline question - ``Have you ever used the services of a lawyer who advertised on TV?'' - 124 of 131 readers said they had not. If nobody is paying attention, why are there so many commercials on the tube by and for lawyers?

Obscure fact of the week - WTKR's Neighborhood Weather Guide booklet says meteorologist Jeff Rucker is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with degrees in science and meteorology and physical oceanography.

Adios, Tim - After Norfolk's very own Tim Reid dedicated New Millennium Studios in Petersburg - he's one of the partners - he began making plans to return to Los Angeles to begin a new season of ``Sister, Sister'' on the Warner Brothers network.

Reid, who says building the studio has been a work of love, wants to be in two places at once - Petersburg and Hollywood. ``It tears me up to leave,'' he says of the Petersburg studio. ``It's where my heart wants to be.''

But the work and the network paycheck is in California.

All hail Doug - A woman who says she's the president of the Doug Aronson fan club - he's the WAVY reporter who's won a regional Emmy - called to say shame on me for never mentioning Aronson in this column.

Well, I was going to write something about the David Letterman-type gap in his front teeth. . . .

She asks, ``Is there a better TV reporter in this market?'' Doug is good - maybe even good enough to be a newspaper reporter. He's 33, married and has been seen nationally covering stories for the NBC News operation in Charlotte, N.C.

Happy now, Miss Doug Aronson Fan Club President?

National exposure - It's not every day you have two cable networks in your city taping stuff for a national audience. It happened in Norfolk last weekend.

Crews from ESPN and ESPN2 dropped in to tape the Virginia-Is-for-Lovers Cup Unlimited Hydroplane Racing Association run on Willoughby Bay and the Stihl Timbersports Series at the Norfolk Naval Air Station.

The latter event is about lumberjacks chopping and sawing to win big cash. ESPN will show the Norfolk qualifying event in the fall, probably in November. ESPN2 scheduled the Norfolk Thunder Tour hydroplane races for July 19 at 2 p.m., July 22 at 3 a.m. and July 29 at 4 a.m.

Question of the week - Would it bother you to learn that your favorite local anchor person has a tattoo? Several do, you know. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Beverly Kidd

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