Happy News

A whole new breed of TV comedy-variety show has evolved. It is the local newscast. Or at least the subspecies of newscast that has adopted what the trade calls the "happy-talk" format. On such programs the anchor man, the weatherman and the sportsman have been supplanted by a happy-go-lucky bunch of banana men. They are not the old authority figures, but just-folks team players. Cronkite is out; Gemuetlichkeit is in. What counts is not how the banana men relate the news, but how they relate to each other.

The idea is that these blazer-clad performers are just naturally bright and witty, able to ad-lib at precisely the right or occasionally the wrong time. Sometimes they dress up in funny costumes or become an encounter group, flinging insults, paper airplanes, even snowballs at each other. At program's end, while the credits roll, they all mill around the top banana's desk as if to continue the office party they had interrupted to go on camera. Much of this spontaneity is, of course, carefully scripted. And the journalistic japesters are heavily advertised with cornball photos and such socko slogans as "People like us because we like us."

People do like them. The introduction of happy talk has caused rating turnarounds across the country. Omaha's WOW rode news jollies from third place to a leading spot. ABC-owned stations in both Manhattan and Chicago, usually next to nowhere in news rankings, leaped into contention for first. Within three years, WLS in Chicago has been able to quadruple its news commercial rate to $2,900 a minute; WABC in New York has enjoyed a remarkable 30% increase in billings since 1968. With that sort of financial flipflop, the CBS-owned Manhattan rival to WABC installed a jazzy new set two weeks ago, shed one anchor man and adopted a slightly folksier style. WABC's News Director Al Primo reports that "dozens" of out-of-town TV executives have flown into New York to scout his operation. By his count, some 60 stations are already employing some variation of the format.

Headline Service. Philip McHugh, an industry consultant on audience attitudes, finds that viewers these days "have diametrically opposed needs: the desire to know, and a tremendous fear of finding out what happened. The communicator has to be someone they like if he is to put the whole frightening world together for them. Someone to say the world didn't come to an end, we all get along fine, and you, too, can get along fine. Go to bed, and get a good night's rest." Obviously, Detroit's WWJ-TV sensed that need with an ad campaign that goes: "So, good news or bad, laugh a little with your News4 favorites. You'll feel better."

Whether or not the increasing levity in local news should make the nation feel better informed is another question. TV newscasts, after all, are the major source of news for most Americans. Locally produced news shows--75% of the total on the air--were never models of journalistic achievement. The average half-hour report allots only 16 1/2 minutes to news and editorials. Even without backchat or horseplay, the program is little more than a superficial headline service.

WABC's Primo insists that he does not "throw anything substantial away in order to get a light story in." On one recent night, however, the 11p.m. news reported only two of the twelve stories that were on the front page of the next morning's New York Times. Primo has developed one new star, Sportscaster Jim Bouton, the apostate pitcher. He has also shown enterprise in covering late-evening feature stories. The WABC drama and film critic, however, is a lightweight named John Schubeck, who gets regularly outclassed by WNBC's Edwin Newman. Television being television, Schubeck is aided by his looks: "Women lose their gourd over John," explains Primo.

Sick Pun. Viewers of both genders will find their gourds rising at the occasional witlessness and tastelessness of the happy-talk humor. Reporting last year on the serious illness of Igor Stravinsky, a WABC banana man punned: "His heart is not right this spring." On Middle East stories, the station stoops to leads like, "Egypt and Israel continued to kick sand in each other's faces," or "The Israelis have as many reservations [about a truce continuation] as we have Indians." On Detroit's WJBK, a banana man playing Rowan to his forecaster's Martin asked: "How does it look tonight?" "Pretty good," leered the forecaster, obviously referring to his girl friend. "I mean the weather," snorted the banana man.

The latest Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Survey of Broadcast Journalism expressed concern that the success of happy news could downgrade the standards of all TV journalism. On some stations, in fact, there are hopeful signs. A number of dabblers in happy talk are sobering up after their earlier excesses, and have settled on an informal format far superior to the original portentous and lugubrious style of TV news. Atlanta's WSB has toned down its forced spontaneity, and the ABC-owned station in Chicago, WLS, which was among the first to succeed with news giggles, has recently reverted to being just as straight and enterprising as (but no more than) any other news gatherer in town. The test for WLS, and the Chicago audience, will be whether the station can maintain both its sobriety and its high ratings.

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