Ron Fineman's ON THE RECORD

On Friday, Federal authorities decided that it would take away 200 million dollars in annual funding from King/Drew Medical Center. It's been clear that if that happened, LA County could no longer afford to keep the hospital going. It was the lead story in the Saturday issue of the LA Times. Yet for LA TV news on Friday, the story appeared to be more of an afterthought. The Times reported that the decision was made late Friday, yet I didn't see any coverage on this in the late afternoon newscasts. It appears that the only reason LA TV news had the story later that night was because it ran on the news wire. And even then, not everyone had it. KCAL had a short story at 10pm, which KCBS and KNBC had short stories at 11pm. KTLA and KTTV did not have it at all on their 10pm newscasts. I did not see KABC's 11pm news.

KCAL (2nd story) - "Well the future of the problem-plagued King/Drew Medical Center in Willowbrook may be in jeopardy now that the center has failed a federal inspection. Failing the inspection means that the center will likely lose critical federal funding. The center has faced years of problems with management and patient care, as well as allegations of fraud in the CPR training for some nurses."

What a strange way that KCAL wrote the story. They wrote the fact that they failed the inspection in passing. And saying the future may be in jeopardy? How is a station so clueless about such a big story?

KCBS (3rd story) - "More trouble for the King/Drew Medical Center tonight. The hospital has reportedly failed a recent federal inspection. Failing the inspection means the center will likely lose critical federal funding. And it could undergo significant reductions in service. The center has faced years of problems with management and patient care, as well as allegations of fraud for CPR training for some nurses."

You can see that the KCAL/KCBS newsroom seemed to get an education between the 10 and 11pm hours. However, I don't know why they felt the need to say the hospital had reportedly failed the inspection.

KNBC (2nd segment, 1st story) - "It could be very bad news for the long troubled King/Drew Medical Center. The hospital failed to pass a federal inspection and once again its future could be in doubt. The county health department says tonight that while King/Drew is making progress in a lot of areas, it failed to meet the minimum national standards for patient care in 9 out of 23 categories. Those results could jeopardize King/Drew's annual 200 million dollars in federal funding, which could create patient care cutbacks, possibly even close the hospital."

Given the importance of this story, why couldn't local TV stations keep track of it on their own?

If you work in the news biz, then you should be reading your local newspaper. Yet it appears that at least one KCAL news writer was asleep at the switch. In a lead-in on KCAL about a leaked intelligence report, it was said that the story was leaked to the New York Times. While that may be true, the story was also leaked to the Los Angeles Times. And so if you are serving a Los Angeles audience, the lead-in should have said that the story was leaked to the LA Times, since that is most likely the newspaper which local viewers are reading. The lead-in was read by Dave Gonzales, and so he should also take his share of the blame for not changing the copy.

Sometimes you think you have a good idea for a fun feature story, but it turns out to look a lot better on paper than in reality. This is a case where someone should have said, "this story doesn't work." Unfortunately, no one at KNBC said that regarding a lame story that KNBC's Cary Berglund did about the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. Whether it was an executive producer or Berglund himself, someone should have pulled the plug. Berglund has shown himself to be a clever story teller in the past. So he should have known he'd come up with a clunker.

The whole point of this story was an irony that Berglund tried to find with the sign above. Berglund said: "But the airport security signs here at an airport named for a comic genius have some people cracking their own jokes that would have banned Bob Hope from his own airport." He says you are forbidden to tell jokes "any jokes it would appear" at the Bob Hope Airport . Berglund told viewers: "If you read the sign literally, it would seem that comics need no travel."

I think it is pretty obvious that the sign is telling people not to joke about bombs, guns, and hijacking. So the first problem is that Berglund's story is born from a false premise. It's essentially a one joke story that wasn't funny. And then Berglund disproved his "analysis" by interviewing a guy who made jokes about the airport.

The man said the concept of "Bob Hope Airport" is hilarious, saying that the airport was like stepping back into the 50s, saying it was hard to get lost there. Berglund chuckled and said "But then you’re not allowed to tell jokes." The man concluded that "the whole place is a joke."

This guy's small airport jokes were the only thing that gave the story any life, but still not enough to justify the story. Yes, after Berglund came back from shooting the story, he should have realized the concept was a lot better than the reality.

As you know, I am one who thinks the term "exclusive" has misused to the point of meaninglessness. Even when the term is technically accurate, it usually does not serve a useful purpose. Normally you will see the word "exclusive" on the screen and you may also hear the anchor or reporter make a verbal reference at the start of the story. However KABC last week did something I'd not seen before.

Jovana Lara had a story about some Nazi banners being hung on two freeway overpasses Friday Morning. (There were similar reports at two locations in the San Diego area too). Then during her live on camera tag, she added "We should tell you that that video you saw of the flags, the banners hanging over the 101, ah, is exclusive…"

Obviously, someone forgot to put the "exclusive" banner over the video. But once it was forgotten, was it really necessary for Lara to mention that after the fact? More than normal, it made the station seem too self-promotional during a news story. Bad decision.

If you can make one story flow into the next one, I'm all for it. But it must make sense! While connecting the Nazi banner story and the beginning of Rosh Hashanah should be have been easy, I think KTLA blew it.

To begin the Rosh Hashanah story, anchor Frank Buckley said "Rabbis tells us those swastikas won’t mar Rosh Hashanah ceremonies taking place throughout the Southland tonight."

Think about that for a second. Would any reasonable person think that some idiot hanging a few Nazi banners is actually going to "mar Rosh Hashanah ceremonies?" If we were talking about an attack on a synagogue or a Jewish Center, then I think you could make a case. But can you imagine a lead sentence which says "Rabbis tell us the hanging of some Swastikas this morning on freeway overpasses has marred Rosh Hashanah ceremonies?"

If you wanted a transition, you could have simply said "The hanging of those Nazi banners comes on the morning before the beginning of Rosh Hashanah." Or, you could have said "The hanging of those Nazi banners came at the beginning of High Holy Days for Jews."

Still another example of why I say that KTLA has the worst news writers in town.

Danny Flores is the man who wrote the song, played sax and said "Tequila" on the Champs' classic record. I'm sure few people knew his name, but it was good to see that someone who gave us such a great song is remembered this many years later.

Flores actually recorded the song using the name Chuck Rio. And according to Fred Bronson's "The Billboard Book of Number One Hits," the song was recorded by a group of musicians with some extra studio time that was left over while working on a Jerry Wallace album. They recorded two songs, "Train to Nowhere" and "Tequila." "Train to Nowhere" was the A-side, but it bombed. However, "Tequila" took off in early 1958, hitting #1 in March.

These musicians were not an organized group and didn't even have a name. But since they recorded for Gene Autry's label (Challenge), they decided to name their group after Autry's horse "Champion."

And this was all before Glen Campbell, Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts joined the band.

Recently I pointed out that fill-in anchor KCAL anchor Mary Beth McDade had forgotten John Ireland's name as she introduced him. I never know when something I write here will create any buzz in any particular newsroom. However, The LA Times' Steve Harvey picked up on the snafu for his Only in LA column, with the picture of McDade on set. You have to know that that was sure to get some attention.

So, maybe it was Steve's reference which prompted McDade to say the following when she introduced Ireland last Friday Night: "Now we’re going to toss it over to my friend John Ireland at Sports Central."

Once again, I was going through some significant back pain on Monday night, and I just couldn't get the issue together, even with a painkiller. I was doing much better today, and so here you have it. I will fill you in on my latest PET/CT scan results in the Friday issue.

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