Newscast Gone Bad

[11/17/06 update: It's official--Leslie Griffith is gone for good from KTVU.]

[9/29/06 update: The Case of the Missing Anchor]

[10/8/06 update: The San Francisco Chronicle's Matier and Ross weighed in on Leslie Griffith's absence. KTVU's general manager said she's on leave at least until October 27; a week or so earlier, he was saying he expected her back on October 9.]

I grew up in the Chicago area with the now-shocking notion that local TV news could be more than a weak, ill-informed entertainment. But not to rely too much on my memory of how solid those newscasts were or weren't -- of course, everything was better in the '60s -- there's not much debate that most TV news has devolved into puffs of insubstantiality dressed up to look like they mean something. If these shows -- both the locals and much of the stuff you see on network and cable -- had to make their living on the actual knowledge they convey, they'd be out of business. But pictures are compelling. We need our weather, sports and advertising and the personalities who present it all. So the shows chug on. 

Here in the Bay Area, the last bastion of news for news' sake was KTVU, Channel 2. Going back to their unaffiliated, pre-Fox days, the station had a 60-minute newscast it put on at 10 p.m., an hour ahead of its competitors and their 30-minute happy-talk shows. Channel 2 managed to use the 60 minutes well. Stories ran longer and there were more of them. "The 10 O'Clock News" developed a cast of reporters and anchors that actually seemed, well, "reliable" and "trustworthy." It developed a reputation of seriousness and substance.

But nothing's forever. Under cost pressure, Channel 2 long ago started cutting back. It started emphasizing easy, cheap stories like traffic accidents, fires, and the latest shootings. Much of the old cast is still there, though many members look tired. One significant change was the departure in 1998 of the longtime co-anchor Elaine Corral, who quit at the end of the broadcast one night without letting anyone know what she was doing. We were watching that night; it was TV to remember. It was also a loss to the show's chemistry -- she and the other anchor, Dennis Richmond, always looked like a good fit -- but it also could have been an example of someone getting out at the right time.

Leslie Griffith, a reporter and weekend anchor best known for her wild mane of blonde hair and somewhat goofy on-air manner, replaced Corral. She seemed like a lightweight next to Richmond, who conveys something you might even think of as gravitas if you forget he's presenting the local news. And no warmth has ever developed between Richmond and Griffith. Richmond is slow but precise; Griffith is someone who once looked like she was having fun on camera but decided or was told she needed to look serious when she became the show's co-star.

The problem is, she can't pull it off, and sometimes her performance is ridiculous: She stumbles on the scripts, she smiles when there's no reason to smile, she hmmms portentously. Last night -- we watched right after wallowing in an hour of "Prison Break" -- she was nearly helpless from the very top of the show when she and Richmond were alternating reading the live teasers:

"As floodwaters recede in New Orleans ... residents are first to return to home ... and ... but they're told ... not just yet."

In the first part of the show, she had another couple muffs that sounded much worse than they read:

"Here in the Bay Area paramedics ... the death toll from Katrina has reached 973 across the entire Gulf Coast region. It stands at 636 [on-screen graphic read 736] in Louisiana."

And:

"Police are looking for the reason ... or the reasons responsible ... the persons responsible ... for a brazen daylight shooting."

Her style when she starts to get lost is to grind on mechanically, like a garbage disposal taking on an avocado pit. Richmond's typical reaction, displayed last night, is visible annoyance or disgust.

Everyone in the news-reading business has bad days. There's a mistake in the script or the production rundown, the TelePrompTer has a problem, or they just get lost. But Leslie does so badly so often that she seems permanently lost. It's hard to understand from the outside why she's permitted to keep going.

Comments

[Pete]

I just hope she's a first-class bi**ch. That way, I won't feel bad about agreeing with you that she needs to be sent packing to a market far, far away. If she's a sweetheart, heck, maybe she can stay on at KTVU and do a Sunday morning public-affairs show or something, just to keep her in Brite-Smile treatments and stuff.

[Lydell]

In Chicago, we have WLS-TV's Cheryl Burton. In 2003, during some pile-on Cub playoff wrapup, the outside-of-Wrigley-Field Kathy Brock (whose brain functions)threw it back to Cheryl in the studio with the challenging, "Cheryl? Any thoughts?" She didn't know there was going to be a test and somewhere Ted Baxter's Ghost beamed proudly.

[judy b.]

just referring to the news staff as a "cast" speaks volumes.

[Marie]

I like Lydell's reference to Ted Baxter.

Our local news station in Springfield is so much hairspray it looks like shellac, fake smiles, nasal intonation, and one big commercial for local businesses, mostly the medical community, all designed to distract from the fact that it's not news.

[Dan]

Yeah -- cast. I realized at TechTV that writing scripts for others to read is a little like writing for a character. You get to know how people sound, words they would and wouldn't use, lines that would work for some and not for others.

I didn't mean the cast comment as a slam, though; I think it's just the truth about one part of the business.

And all the truly dumb things that happen on the air aside, I have to say I encountered a lot of smart, thoughtful people at TechTV who really were trying to create the best product with the available resources (said resources including a managing editor from print journalism who didn't know a lick about television).

[Tom]

Leslie Griffith is a toad. I can't STAND the way she has to make her voice traverse a 4 octave tonal range... She is constantly digging her chin into her chest so she can hit the low notes. Everyone I know that has seen her speak mimmicks her antics. Doesn't KTVU realize what a joke this blonde freak is?

[mialexa]

God, Leslie makes me writhe in embarrassment. She is painful to watch. I am sure she is a running joke around the station. It's all very sad.

[budha]

The big questions are: 1) Why is she still on the air? 2)Who is she related to to be allowed to stay? and 3) He or She??? Is a puzzlement. On going debate in our home. Look at that adams apple.

[Dan]

Adams apple? Be nice -- and remember when Leslie was a sweet young thing with a sort of wild and crazy personality (long before she was compressed into the anchor's chair).

The reason she's still there is that the show is still generating the numbers it needs to stay ahead of the competition. That's the long and the short of it, and quite a sad commentary on the rest of the Bay Area "news programs."

We shouldn't let Dennis Richmond off too easily, either. Most nights he looks like he's in a sulk about having to sit next to what's-her-name; meantime, his own performance is on occasion painfully tired. Extrapolating the way Leslie's reporter salary has moved over the last five or six years, Dennis is probably pulling down $750,000-$850,000 a year -- conceivably more than that. You'd think that in return for that pile of cash he could get excited about work once in a while.

[Mitchell]

Tim wrote: "Leslie Griffith is a toad. I can't STAND the way she has to make her voice traverse a 4 octave tonal range... She is constantly digging her chin into her chest so she can hit the low notes. Everyone I know that has seen her speak mimmicks her antics. Doesn't KTVU realize what a joke this blonde freak is?"

I thought I was the only one who noticed "Ms Dip" (Leslie Griffith). That's what I call Leslie when she does the murder and killing reports or some death-related thing especially at the begining of the newscast. She keeps that chin dip going down to her chest with those low-octave tones until around the time of sports and then she turns it off. At that point in the "newscast" regardless of what has happened in the news, she's happy. The tones of death, murder, bodies found, killing, despair, dysfunction, and suffering are going (until her next performance). Around the time of sports and weather, they're all one big happy family. All smiles. This corporate infotainment sucks. I never see news anchors from Europe (BBC or DW-TV Germany) doing that stuff. They don't "act" the news, they just read it, as it should be in my opinion.

From what I remember of Elaine Corral-Kendall, she didn't do all that stuff. I wonder what Dennis Richmond thinks about Leslie doing all that "theatrics" stuff?

Dana King at KPIX is a close second to Leslie when it comes to acting the news (watch her eyes and her head).