DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060082

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LARRY BONKO

                                            LENGTH:   87 lines

LNC OVERCAME LACK OF ELECTION-NIGHT DRAMA

ONE HOUR and 18 minutes into Local News on Cable's four-hour coverage of Tuesday's election, ABC News and The Associated Press declared a winner in the governor's race: Jim Gilmore.

That left LNC with two hours and 42 minutes to cover a race that had all the air sucked out of it by 8:18 p.m.

How did LNC meet the challenge?

With a ``Your Voice, Your Vote'' panel, made up of what host Regina Mobley called ``ordinary'' citizens. (Wouldn't you hate to be called ``ordinary''?)

By convening the panel, LNC had a place to go when the four-hour coverage sagged. The 10 people in the studio were just dying to tell Mobley what they thought.

With the ``Your Voice, Your Vote'' panel's help, LNC put together a watchable four hours.

Mark Earley running away with the attorney general's race? Concession speeches starting as early as 9:11 p.m.? Oh, boy. What do we do now?

Over to you, Regina.

It also helped that LNC - a joint venture of WVEC, Cox cable and The Virginian-Pilot - had The Pilot's savvy Margaret Edds in the paper's newsroom to toss in a commentary here and there, with LNC anchor LaSalle Blanks sitting at her elbow. But I wish he had followed up on what she said.

Why will Gilmore be kinder and gentler to state employees, as you suggest, Margaret? Is the incumbent governor mean to them? Learn to ask follow-up questions, LaSalle.

If it's any consolation, your makeup was better than Margaret's.

For the first time in this market, viewers with cable were able to watch non-stop coverage of gubernatorial returns from the minute the polls closed. However, there was a price to pay.

They had to endure a flood of badly produced commercials for local rug shops, car dealers and second-mortgage companies. Who's the cowboy riding the rolled-up carpet?

One nice surpise on LNC was the appearance of ABC's Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts.

They came on early in the four-hour block, with Donaldson hinting that ABC was about to declare Republican Gilmore the winner over Democrat Don Beyer. The polls hadn't been closed 22 minutes!

Donaldson lives in Virginia. He voted on Tuesday, but did not say for whom.

Both Donaldson and Roberts, who do a Sunday-morning show for ABC, believe the Virginia election will have national impact. It tells the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties that voters are crying out for a tax cut.

``The tax issue is a very potent device,'' Donaldson opined.

He and Roberts gave LNC a touch of class.

LNC's Mike Gooding, stationed in Richmond at Gilmore headquarters, rounded up the Republican party's national chairman (Jim Nicholson), who echoed what Donaldson said. Politicians around the nation may heed the call for tax cuts that were first heard in Virginia this week.

No car tax, indeed.

Gooding also brought on Gilmore supporter Pat Robertson, who donated $50,000 to the new governor's campaign. Robertson said his Christian Coalition followers had passed out voter guides in Virginia and New Jersey, which also elected a governor.

What a year the man has had. He sold his cable channel for $1.4 billion, and now his candidate is about to occupy Virginia's governor's mansion.

Robertson did more than hint that a victory for Gilmore was a victory for Robertson's conservative politics. Might Robertson himself seek high office again?

Not likely, the evangelist told Gooding.

It was Gooding's colleague, Bruce Moore, who had perhaps the best line in LNC's coverage. At Beyer's Richmond hotel he noted that the band was playing. The band also played on the Titanic, said Moore, and it sank like Beyer's campaign.

No doubt about it. The LNC ``Your Voice, Your Vote'' coverage was a good thing.

Cable subscribers were able to bounce in and bounce out of LNC's coverage, picking up a factoid or two - Chesapeake and Virginia Beach went heavily for Gilmore, Norfolk and Portsmouth for Beyer - and then go back to ``Robocop'' or whatever on another channel.

It beat watching the election returns on the over-the-air stations - being forced to see infographics that all but pushed ``Mad About You'' and ``Michael Hayes'' right off the screen. And how about the stunt WAVY pulled, abruptly cutting into ``Dateline NBC'' to wedge in a Gilmore interview? How rude.

LNC sounded like a good idea when it was launched earlier this year. On Tuesday night, LNC proved itself.

LNC was not alone in doing something special as the votes rolled in.

At 9 p.m., WAVY brought its ``Decision 97'' coverage to prime time, taking an hour's air time on WVBT. WAVY also had a newspaper person (Jim Spencer of the Daily Press), and it called on a college professor (Elsie Barnes of Norfolk State) to analyze the vote.

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