DATE: Thursday, November 20, 1997           TAG: 9711190080

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LARRY BONKO

                                            LENGTH:   90 lines

WTKR NEWS TEAM DEFIED ADVERSITY DURING SWEEPS

(This is the second of three reports on how the newsrooms of local network affiliates try to hook viewers during a critical ratings period.)

IF YOU COMPARE the November sweeps to the Super Bowl, you could say that WTKR's team wasn't at full strength for the big game.

Channel 3's news director quit just days before the sweeps began. WTKR's co-anchor at 6 and 11 p.m., LeAnne Rains, was out on medical leave, eventually missing three weeks. The newsroom stood in flux with anchors Jane Gardner, Jan Callaghan and Ann Keffer changing jobs along with some producers and directors.

As the November sweeps arrived - the Nielsen survey by which ad rates are set for months to come - WTKR's local news wasn't in the best shape to pull itself up from being No. 3 at 6 and 11.

When your first team is hurting at ratings' time, it's nice to have the ``NewsChannel 3 Lucky Number Contest'' suited up on the bench and ready to go.

The giveaway, in which viewers could win up to $10,000, all but guaranteed that 9 to 10 percent of Hampton Roads' 635,810 TV households would be tuned in to WTKR at the dinner hour no matter who was anchoring, producing, directing or what stories were being covered.

``Watch for the NewsChannel 3 Lucky Number Tonight at 6! You can win maybe $10,000.''

Did you watch? Did you win?

If you are a Nielsen family, how could you resist?

WTKR sought to buy the viewers' loyalty with a letter that began, ``You're invited to watch our newscast and play the `NewsChannel 3 Lucky Number Contest.' You can win $500 or more.''

That giveaway, inserted in a local newscast, is gauche, and not what Uncle Sam had in mind when he licensed broadcasters to serve the public interest.

But in fairness to WTKR, the newsroom didn't sit back and let the personal-lucky-number contest do all the work of racking up ratings during sweeps. The staff hustled, most notably in the hours after Saddam Hussein's latest lunacy had the crews of ships and planes in Tidewater packing up and heading for the Middle East.

There was crusty ol' Ed Hughes, sitting at WTKR's hastily set up Persian Gulf Desk, telling viewers he had the world at his fingertips thanks to the technology available by satellite, computer and telephone. Is that Tom Fenton of CBS News on the line from aboard the guided missile cruiser Port Royal in the Persian Gulf, talking to you in Norfolk, Ed?

By gosh, it is.

You can win $500 or more just by watching ``NewsChannel 3.'' And not only that. You get a bonus.

You can hear Hughes - Mr. Hard-Nosed, Get-Me-Out-From-Under-This-Desk-to-Where-the-News-is-Breaking, Dan-Rather-kind-of-a-guy - communicating directly with CBS where the action was taking place.

Yes, the gang in the WTKR newsroom was hustling to emerge from third place. Even Tom Randles, the million-dollar anchor man, found his way out of the studio TO ACTUALLY COVER A STORY! It was Randles putting you in the driver's seat with a female road warrior.

If WTKR's newsroom wasn't charging hard, would Mary Kay Mallonee have been in a motel room that was the scene of a drug bust, telling viewers about a suspect ``who flushed drugs down that toilet THERE''?

Would Stacey Baca be standing at a urinal, flushing, in the boy's rest room of a school in Surry County, reporting on falling water pressure that led to classes being cancelled?

These are the diligent reporters of News-Channel 3, Sky Center 3, Talkback 3, Storm Team 3 who are willing to go anywhere - even on the station's roof to see if it's really raining, even in places where people hope to flush in private.

When reporters aren't flushing, they're passing out helpful hints on how to make your home less drafty, extinguish fires on the kitchen stove (``don't use water'') and find the satanic lyrics on rock CDs.

Fewer of the ``extra'' and ``special reports'' stuff you see on other stations during the sweeps pops up on Channel 3, although the station did give in to sweeps hysteria with ``Zinc: Miracle Cure or Fading Fad?''

Bob West does his Charles Kuralt on-the-road thing, and Callaghan the other day had a feature piece about dummies calling the 911 for-emergencies-only number to get the starting times of concerts at the amphitheater in Virginia Beach.

But when I think of WTKR, I think of yellow crime-scene tape, not Bob West re-discovering a Civil War battlefield. After watching the station day and night in November, I've developed an aversion for that red, black and yellow blocky ``NewsChannel 3'' logo. It's an assault on the eyeballs.

There was a moment during the sweeps when Channel 3 did a nice bit of offbeat reporting - Dale Gauding's story of the Pearsalls, a Virginia Beach family, helping to prepare a dog named Nance for service with Guiding Eyes.

To lead the blind, only the best dogs are selected. Gauding had me pulling for Nance all the way. And I was also watching to see if my personal lucky number came up.

(Next week, it's a column on how WVEC's news operation stepped it up during the November sweeps).

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