MEDIA MURDOCH’S COMING!

AMID THE HOOPLA over Chuck and Diana visiting this country a while back, you may have missed a tiny item on page 2 of The Dallas Morning News, It reported, quite briefly, that John and Patricia Kluge, who were to have hosted a Palm Beach, Florida, charity ball for the Prince and his bride, withdrew after British newspapers revealed that Mrs. Kluge once posed nude for England’s Knave magazine. It wasn’t much of a news story. Hardly worth mentioning. But in (he newsroom of KRLD television. Channel 33 in Dallas, the Kluge item was a hot topic for days. After all, John Kluge is the 71-year-old billionaire who controls Channel 33. along with KRLD radio. LDS Long Distance and a raft of other communications companies known collectively as Metromedia, Inc. This was the boss1 wife who had frolicked in the altogether for Knave cameras.

There was more of local interest than that, though. The mention of British newspapers in connection with a steamy story automatically called to mind international media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch owns London’s Sun, which he built into the largest newspaper in the English language with the help of screaming headlines, sleazy articles and daily photos of bare-breasted women. Right now, he wants to expand his empire by buying six TV stations Kluge owns, including Channel 33.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting if it was one of Murdoch’s papers that broke the story about Mrs. Kluge?” remarked Channel 33 news anchorman Quin Mathews. “I wonder if business deals ever tall apart over things like that.”

A little checking shows it was the London Daily Mail, not Murdoch’s Sun, that bared Mrs. Kluge’s past, but the Kluge item is the quintessential Murdoch story. It has nearly all the stock elements that make up most of his 90-odd newspapers-money, royalty, sex. a beautiful woman. The story would be more Murdochian only if. while romping naked, the 36-year-old woman had hacked out someone’s liver and eaten it. Along with Generoso Pope Jr., owner of the infamous National Enquirer, Rupert Murdoch is the king of what better journalists scoffingly refer to as “I ate my baby” stories.

Given Murdoch’s history of turning more or less respectable news operations into scandal sheets, it is impossible to avoid wondering what will happen to news at Channel 33 and five sister Metromedia stations if and when the $1.5 billion deal with Kluge goes through. Will the Dallas station that already promotes “Dynasty” with billboards urging viewers to “Go to bed with Alexis” become the National Enquirer of the air? (Actually, it would be the Star of the air, since Murdoch owns the tabloid Star, a New York-based National Enquirer lookalike.) Will Mathews tease us into the news with variations on a famous headline from Murdoch’s New York Post, ” ’Headless Body in Topless Bar-Details at 7″?

Sounds far-fetched. but the concern is real enough to have been voiced in formal objections to Murdoch’s purchase filed with the Federal Communications Commission. In fact, those protests were the only temporary barriers to FCC approval of the six-station transaction. Citizens’ groups earnestly contend there is no room for Murdoch-style news on the public airwaves.

In objecting to the Murdoch deal, a group called the National Coalition on Television Violence cited a study of news content in the Chicago Sun-Times conducted by the Northwestern University school of journalism. The analysis showed that the Sun’s reports of violent crimes and similar “sensational” news increased by fully one-third after Murdoch purchased the paper in 1984.

“We found that, in every case, reports of sensational murders, rapes and other violent crimes increased both in number and in the prominence of their display after Murdoch took over,” says Dr. Thomas Radecki of NCTV. “Our own study of the New York Post found that emphasis on violence increased 145 percent when he bought the paper.”

The Media Access Project, a Washington, D.C., organization that may challenge the FCC decision in court, also criticized Murdoch’s record. “He has not distinguished himself as a journalist, and I don’t expect him to distinguish himself as a broadcaster,” says executive director Andrew Schwartz-man. “He has shown himself to be insensitive and irresponsible, and we are extremely concerned about what he might do to pump up profits at these U.S. television stations.”

“I Ihink it’s unfair,” says Channel 33 general manager Ray Schonbak. “Someone like Taft Broadcasting buys an independent station with no news at all, and no objections are filed, But Murdoch comes along and pays top dollar for a group of independents with a real commitment to news and people claim he is the wrong guy. I think the filings are based on a misunderstanding of what Murdoch is about. He has communicated to us a real sense of what news is. And he is buying stations that care about news.”



INDEED, METROMEDIA television stations, including Channel 33, do seem to care about news. In the industry, they are generally considered the group with the strongest news programs among independents. All are located in major markets-New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth-but they consistently show up well against the big-budget operations of the network affiliates. In Houston, KRIV’s evening news often leads KHOU, the CBS station, in ratings.

With Nielsen numbers averaging 2.5f roughly 38,000 homes. KRLD news is for off the ratings pace in Dallas. But the program debuted barely 18 months ago, and it challenges traditional viewing habits with its 7 p.m. time slot. Station surveys show that only about 28 percent of people who watch TV in Dallas know that Channel 33 exists, and just a tiny fraction of those are aware of its evening news program. Metromedia executives believe ratings will climb as viewers discover an alternative to network prime-time schlock like “The A-Team,” “Magnum, P.I.” and “Who’s the Boss?”

Certainly, KRLD looks serious about the news. Before its first show aired on July 30, 1984, the station installed state-of-the-art electronics that put it technically ahead of any local network affiliate. A computerized writing and editing system similar to one recently installed at Channel 8 and lightweight beta-cam videotape equipment like that now in use at Channel 4 are the best available. The spacious, carpeted, well-organized newsroom must be the envy of many TV reporters, who usually are lodged in dreary cubbyholes.

And the show works. Anchor Quin Math-ews, grateful to be hired away from Channel 4, comes across on camera with a rare combination of authoritativeness and amiability. Weatherman Dave Eiser, while a bit flamboyant for those weaned on Harold Taft at Channel 5, is at least as palatable as WFAA’s Troy Dungan. Though the reporting staff is small-Channel 33 has only five camera crews compared to 19 at Channel 8-coverage is adequate on most stories short of a plane crash at D/FW airport.

When it was only about five months old, Channel 33 news won accolades from United Press International as the best television news broadcast in Texas. More recently, 33 was among the finalists for the Dallas Press Club’s Katie awards in three categories: TV weather, special story and public affairs programming. Calling it the best news show in the state seems overly exuberant, but KRLD, like other Metromedia stations, has won respect as a news organization. If Murdoch is smart, he’ll leave it alone-except, perhaps, to double or triple its $1.2 million news budget.

So far, Murdoch has knocked himself out promising not to tinker with the Metromedia news formula. He assured the FCC that his intentions are strictly honorable, and he has sold the premise to executives at Metromedia and Channel 33.

“I don’t think he’s going to fiddle with the news product,” says the station’s former news director Tony DeHaro, who met Murdoch this summer. “He bought Metromedia because it is successful, and I doubt he’ll make major changes,” agrees general manager Schonbak.

“We were concerned about Murdoch’s reputation when this sale was first being negotiated,” says Joe Saitta, Metromedia’s vice-president for news. “We didn’t want someone who would come in and try to turn our stations into scandal sheets. We checked into that very carefully, and Murdoch has assured us that he wants good, responsible journalism as much as we do.”



SO FAR, SO good. Unfortunately, Murdoch’s assurances are not always believable.

In Australia, Murdoch’s native country (he became an American citizen in September because foreigners cannot legally own U.S. television stations), he was full of promises in 1979 before he snapped up a Sydney TV station called Ten-10. The Australian Broadcasting Commission, evaluating the proposed purchase, asked whether Murdoch planned major changes in policy or management. Asked specifically about Ten-10’s chairman, Sir Kenneth Humphreys, Murdoch credited him with doing “a magnificent job” and said “industry hearsay” about firings was rubbish. Three months after the deal was consummated, Humphreys was replaced by the finance director of Murdoch’s News Limited, a company name some Australians found uncomfortably appropriate.

Then, in 1981, Murdoch faced an inquiry by a committee of the British House of Commons into his plans to purchase The Times and The Sundav Times of London. Because he already owned the Sun and News of the World, easily the two most salacious of England’s many breasts-and-blood newspapers. Parliament feared he would set the nation’s most distinguished daily on the low road. There would be no changes, Murdoch said. It was, he said, a guarantee.

Almost immediately after taking over The Times, however, Murdoch canned editor Harold Evans and added sensational stories to the paper’s front page mix. When The Times printed bogus Adolph Hitler diaries, Murdoch defended the move by saying. “After all, we are in the entertainment business,” Worse, he scandalized the British by promoting The Times with a lottery-style giveaway similar to the Wingo game popular in the New York Post. Londoners dubbed it “dingo,” after the Australian wild dog.

In the House of Commons hearing, Murdoch also managed a slick but shabby trick. Asked why he had fired Humphreys in Australia, he vaguely hinted at financial mismanagement. Committee members did not know that Humphreys had died just before the hearing opened. Murdoch won approval to buy London’s most important newspaper group by smearing a dead man.

Though no hearings were conducted before Marshall Field V sold the Chicago Sun-Times in 1984, Murdoch offered assurances there, too. He promised syndicated columnist Mike Royko and a few other valued Sun-Times staffers that no editorial changes were planned. But Royko looked at Murdoch’s track record and at the wretched editorial packages offered by the major Murdoch holdings in the U.S.-the New York Post and the San Antonio Express-News-and said, “The hell with him. I can’t work for that man.” Royko now writes for the crosstown competition, the Chicago Tribune.

As it turned out, Murdoch fired about a fourth of the Sun-Times editorial team, including everyone he considered “too liberal.” He also reorganized coverage to make the Chicago tabloid look a lot like the miserable New York Post. Royko was right. He couldn’t work for that man.

Despite these problems, it must be said that Murdoch has lived up to his promises in a few other cases. As owner of New York’s The Village Voice, which he recently sold to Leonard Stern, the Hartz Mountain pet products baron, he kept his fingers out of editorial matters even though the paper’s ultraliberal bent must have rankled his archly conservative soul. Interminably mediocre New York magazine has not improved since Murdoch bought it, but it hasn’t gotten any worse.

Ray Schonbak guesses that Murdoch will not meddle at Channel 33, at least not at first. In the long run, however, he predicts the new owner may apply an approach to journalism that is “broader than most.” As Schonbak sees it, “Murdoch has a sense of the broadening of journalism. He wants to offer a broader form of journalism for the masses.”

It’s tough to fathom what that might mean. But “journalism for the masses” is an expression Generoso Pope Jr. sometimes uses to explain the workings of the National Enquirer. Could it be that Dallas is in for a 7 p.m. newscast filled with giant vegetables, visitors from outer space, mangled bodies and celebrity love affairs? Will the news alternative be, “Headless Body in Topless Bar”?

Stay tuned.