TELEVISION : TV Stirringly Shows Faces of Tragedy

This is where television shines.

As the body count from the Oklahoma City bombing rises, so does the number of human interest stories on television--stories of death, stories of despair, stories of survival, stories of hope, stories of generosity, stories of heroism, stories of anger about a slaughter of innocents so heinous as to be inexplicable to the rational mind.

Americans don’t need much prodding to rally around victims of tragedy. Yet, within recent memory, has there ever been such a period of national mourning played out on TV, a time when coverage of a story has so united America through grief, much of it symbolized by deep emotion, right down to the toes, about the deaths of so many young children?

And the intensity seems destined to rise following the appearance of President Clinton and the First Lady in Oklahoma City at Sunday’s memorial service for the dead victims of the blast at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Few writers can even approach television when it comes to stirring the heart and creating empathy and compassion for victims of calamity. TV’s presence in Somalia had that effect, as pictures of skeletal, diseased, fly-infested, starving children mobilized wide public support for intervention in behalf of suffering masses there.

Yet Somalia was a distant land that few Americans had even heard of, making even the plight of those walking dead a relative abstraction compared with the mass slaying of heartland Americans in Oklahoma City and the search for bodies and survivors buried in the building ruins.

The envious God of Sensational News Stories was at work Friday, creating a serious fracas on the O.J. Simpson jury that threatened to wrench attention from Oklahoma City and refocus media on Los Angeles, where their beloved trial appeared in disarray. It worked, but only partially. However tragic the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman, the increasingly bizarre trial of their alleged murderer paled, for the moment, beside the deeper-etched grisly images from Oklahoma City. Instead of being voyeurs, viewers could picture themselves almost as co-victims.

At one point Friday, CNN ran a pastiche of its TV snapshots from the bombing aftermath, unwisely accompanied by intrusive symphonic music. The sad strings were not only manipulative but unneeded, as these frozen pictures from Oklahoma City spoke eloquently, activating your emotional circuitry from top to bottom.

Especially unforgettable was a shot of a woman carrying a small African American girl whose face was badly cut and eyes vacant as she gazed at the camera, seemingly in a trance. At least she was alive.

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HE’S B-A-A-A-A-CK. He’s hired, he’s fired. He’s hired, he’s fired. He’s hired.

Like an ever-recycled major league baseball manager, Steve Edwards just keeps coming back. So it was Edwards, whose most recent TV gig was the fleeting “Live in L.A.” morning show on KCAL-TV Channel 9, who was tapped by KTTV-TV Channel 11 to host the latest version of its 2-year-old “Good Day L.A.” morning program. He is scheduled to begin today.

Edwards will continue to co-host a sports talk show on KABC radio. Reaching for another sports metaphor, you might think of him as the quintessential utility player, a durable talent for all seasons who can plug any need. You want sports, he does sports. You want topical, he does topical. You want serious, he does serious. You want funny, he does funny. You want cooking, he could probably poach an egg for you too.

Just what he and Channel 11 will cook up together remains to be seen.

As for “Good Day L.A.,” it began life trying to out-silly KTLA-TV Channel 5’s popular “Morning News,” an impossibility. Then it got more serious. Then it shuffled some personnel. The ratings went up a bit, but “Good Day L.A.” remained a blip compared with “Morning News.” So now comes this latest, more severe move.

Several “Good Day L.A.” regulars are staying on as Edwards’ supporting cast. Two who aren’t are the old show’s capable co-anchors, Tony McEwing and Susan Lichtman. McEwing has been reassigned and Lichtman offered a reporting job. Meanwhile, Lichtman will continue anchoring the morning portions of Channel 11’s excellent live coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, where she radiates good sense and intelligence.

She did so as well on “Good Day L.A.,” the show from which she was fired. But that’s show biz.

“Good Day L.A.” ended Friday with Edwards being welcomed on the set by the twosome he was replacing. It was a moment of civility and awkwardness typified by smiles, hugs and stiff upper lips, with Lichtman telling Edwards just how great it was to “hand the show over to you.”

The occasion recalled a time not long ago when Edwards himself had passed a baton to a successor on the air, after his topical afternoon talk show on KABC radio was supplanted by another headed by Dennis Prager.

“We all kind of keep circulating around,” Lichtman told Edwards. That is show biz.