Viewpoints: Stumbling Start

By Judy Fayard

"Good morning, this is AM America," beamed Host Bill Beutel. Chirped Hostess Stephanie Edwards a second later: "This moment of tension is brought to you by a lot of nice people." On that note, ABC's long-ballyhooed big show finally hit the air last week.

The tension was understandable. The network has invested 18 months of planning and $8 million in AM America, its first attempt to compete in TV's early morning reveille race against NBC's 23-year-old winner, Today, and the trailing but steady CBS Morning News. Unfortunately, AM America stumbled out of the starting gate and only slowly recovered after that.

The two-hour show's "entertainment and information" format is so far a staccato muddle of the shallowly portentous ("What is your outlook on the state of the world, Roy?" asked former New York Mayor John Lindsay, now a guest commentator on the show, of British Home Secretary Roy Jenkins) and the trivial (last Monday was Joan of Arc's birthday). Jazzy film montages flick past to numbingly appropriate pop music (example: shots of gold bars set to the strains of Donovan's Mellow Yellow). The only relief is the show's solidly professional, twice-hourly newscast anchored by Peter Jennings, 36, former ABC network-news anchor man and most recently chief of ABC's Beirut bureau.

Unflaggingly Unabrasive. This higgledy-piddling format was market research-shaped (by the consulting firm of Magid Associates), right down to the hosts' yellow molded-plastic podiums (desks were ruled out as "authority barriers"). The hosts themselves were formatted to appeal to an untapped younger audience (18 to 49, as opposed to the Today average age, 51) that the researchers contend is out there.

The easygoing Beutel, 44, former anchor man for ABC-New York's Eyewitness News, made the show because, says Executive Producer Dennis Doty, he should "wear well in the morning." Indeed he has so far been unflaggingly unabrasive. To provide political commentary, the show has enlisted such part-time "AMericans" as Lindsay, former Senator Sam Ervin, former Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Civil Rights Activist Jesse Jackson.

Much of AM America's advertised "bubble, spark and style," however, is programmed to come from Edwards, 31, a tall, red-haired former actress with the happy-peppy air of a sorority house activities chairman. For the past three years she prepped as co-host on a local Los Angeles TV talk show. Encouraging absolutely no comparison with Today's Barbara Walters, Doty emphasizes that "Stephanie is not a journalist"--a fact instantly clear as she blew most of her bubble in an inept interview with Psychiatrists Karl and Roy Menninger of Topeka's Menninger Clinic. (Sample query: "Do you treat them all the same way whether they come kicking or screaming or not?")

It is too early to predict how AM America will finally fare. But the staff seems undaunted by the barbs of early bad reviews. Announced Edwards hopefully at the start of one show: "We're going to keep doing it until we get it right."

qed Judy Fayard

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