This alumnus is Burt Kearns, Class of 1978, and author of Tabloid
Baby, an insider's memoir of the advent of tabloid television which
debuted with programs like A Current Affair and Hard Copy - both of which he
produced. Kearns claims his Jesuit education gave him the discipline to
flourish in the hard-driving, hard-drinking world of tabloid television. He
says he acquired that discipline by "living through a semester's course" with
Father John McIntyre, S.J., "the strictest, most demanding, frustrating
professor I ever had."
"I tried everything I could think of to get out of that class," says Kearns
with a wince in his voice. "But in the end I stuck with it and Father McIntyre
wound up teaching me discipline - which was most important because, as
undisciplined as we are in our lives, all the best 'journos' I know are very
disciplined at their trade. And, he showed me the importance of language -
that authors don't 'try to' say something; they say it."
Kearns also cites another semester-long course on Ulysses, taught by
Prof. Lou Berrone, as contributing to his well-rounded education. "Imagine
wanting to be a writer and getting the opportunity to spend an entire semester
with James Joyce!" he says. "It doesn't get much better than that."
Kearns fondly recalled his stint at the then fledgling radio station WVOF
where he spent most of his spare time. "I inaugurated and hosted a talk show
called Radio Anarchy," he says. "We allowed students to talk about whatever
they wanted to on the air. It was pretty innovative at the time." In addition,
his job as program director for WVOF also provided an outlet to indulge his
lifelong passion for rock music.
His road to the rough and tumble world of tabloid television was rather
conventional. He began his career as a freelance writer for the local
Fairfield Citizen-News and, upon graduation, took a job as a reporter
at The Ridgefield Press. After only two years he moved on to its sister
paper, The Wilton Bulletin, as its editor.
"I did it all," he says. "I wrote the stories; I covered planning and
zoning meetings; I went to Rotary Club luncheons and I ran around town taking
photos of everything. I covered the town. That was my grad school."
Kearns soon grew bored with small town news and suburban life and decided
to take his chances in the Big Apple. "This girl I knew at Fairfield U. had a
boyfriend who worked for Metromedia's Channel 5. I contacted him and the next
thing I knew I was working on the assignment desk at WNEW-TV, Channel 5's Ten
O'clock News." To boost his entry level salary, he'd leave right after his
show and race across town to moonlight as a writer for CBS' Nightwatch and the
CBS Morning News.
Two years later, Kearns moved over to NBC where he was made the producer of
WNBC-TV News 4's Eleven O'clock News, the highest rated local TV news show in
New York. At first it was heady stuff, but "I soon got frustrated working for
network news," he says. "The idea is for every news outlet to get the same
story and present it first - or else in a different way." Then GE and its
Chairman "Neutron Jack" Welch took over the network. "He saw waste and aimed
to eliminate it," causing the network's union of 3,000 writers, editors and
technicians to strike.
The 17-week strike ended in defeat for the union and life at WNBC-TV was
never the same. Temporary workers filled union jobs, overtime evaporated,
positions were combined, benefits eroded, and the bottom line became the name
of the game. Kearns sensed his days at News 4 were numbered, settled into an
uneasy routine, and contemplated life as a corporate drone.
Meanwhile an Australian named Rupert Murdoch had added Metromedia to his
Fox News empire and was launching A Current Affair - a new show that was
breaking all the rules of network news. They paid for stories. They re-enacted
crime scenes. They used music to dramatize stories and sometimes questionable
tactics to get home videos of ordinary people in all kinds of situations.
His old buddies at Channel 5 started phoning Kearns trying to lure him
back. "Things were exciting," they said. "The airwaves were opening to
different kinds of stories run by different kinds of people." Murdoch had gone
to the bars of Australia where he'd hired "journos" who had different
sensibilities than American journalists. The guy in charge of A Current Affair
was "a crazed Australian genius" named Peter Brennan and its host was a
"semi-washed-up journeyman anchor" named Maury Povich.
So, in 1989 Kearns jumped ship and joined forces with the Aussies to
produce A Current Affair. "We had our own agenda," he says. "We did the
stories no one else did. I'd have 200 local newspapers from across America
delivered to my desk every day. I'd go though the Metro sections and look for
the small town stories with age-old themes of love, lust, murder and mayhem
that had national implications," he explains.
"We had a Front Page mentality," he remembers. "Peter Brennan ran the show
from a bar. He'd write down all the information on cocktail napkins and, of
course, I'd have to stay there with him in order to get the show on the air.
It was pretty stimulating stuff for a suburban kid from Trumbull, Conn. -
hanging out in a bar 24-hours a day, living and breathing the show, fueled by
alcohol and adrenaline. It was a very romantic, exciting time."
A Current Affair was a smash hit - the hottest, boldest new show to hit the
airwaves in decades. They covered it all: the William Kennedy Smith trial, the
Preppy murder case, the Rob Lowe scandal, Joey Buttafuoco, Son of Sam, even
the fall of the Berlin Wall. Kearns stayed with the show until the summer of
1990 and then he and the "bad-boy" Aussies moved on to Hard Copy - and to
California.
The tabloid TV genre continued to dominate the airwaves for most of the
1990s and Kearns kept surfacing as producer or consultant for A Current Affair
until 1995. The success of ACA and Hard Copy spawned such shows as Inside
Edition, An American Journal, and Premiere Story - a late-night newsmagazine
alternative to Nightline which Kearns also produced. And then it was over.
A Current Affair died in 1996; Hard Copy followed suit in 2000. "They were
killed by their own success," opines Kearns. "The tabloid shows no longer
offered an alternate take on anything." Beginning with the O.J. Simpson story,
the mainstream media, ever conscious of the ratings, took over tabloid TV,
cleaned it up, softened it and turned it into Entertainment Tonight, 20/20,
and Dateline - escalating to new heights "during the Lewinsky scandal and
Clinton shenanigans." Even the venerable 60 Minutes devoted much of its time
to the fodder that fed tabloid TV.
Kearns reflects that his tabloid experience "gave me a chance to sail with
the pirates, to walk a thin line between revolution and anarchy, and to break
down the barriers that the television news establishment had spent decades
building." He says he hopes "we were able to democratize our selection of
stories, by the way they were told and by the people who were allowed to
present them."
He spent three years writing his book Tabloid Baby, "the
best-reviewed media book you've never heard of," which was launched with a
bang in 1999 at bi-coastal parties in New York and Los Angeles. It received
rave reviews from the likes of 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace, former anchor Maury
Povich, and New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy. Kearns geared up
for a promo tour that included bookings on shows like Larry King Live,
Dateline, Access Hollywood, and Roseanne.
Suddenly, all his scheduled appearances were cancelled. The networks and
major print media "pulled the plug" and staged a full-fledged publicity
blackout because the "bigwigs" decided Kearns' book had attacked their sacred
cows.
Nonetheless Kearns soldiered on with his own 20-city book tour that began,
appropriately enough, at Waldenbooks in Trumbull (where his sister hired a
gospel choir), and continued throughout the nation with bookings on local
radio and television stations. Tabloid Baby became a bestseller in
Australia and was ranked No. 1 in Amazon.com's Radio & Television section.
In 2000 Columbia Tri-Star bought the movie and television rights and is
working with Tony Danza's Katyface Productions to produce either a movie or
television series tentatively titled The Sopranos of Television News. Kearns'
website, Tabloidbaby.com, continues to promote the book, which will be
reissued sometime this year, targeted to journalism schools and media sections
of bookstores.
Kearns presently owns a production company, Frozen Television, with his
partner Brett Hudson - also known as actress Kate Hudson's uncle. He has been
producing a variety of documentaries for Court TV, called Mug Shots, the most
recent of which profiled Sean Puffy Combs; Andrew Cunanan, the murderer of
Versace; the Skakel case; and Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who became
involved with a 13-year-old student. He plans to continue making
documentaries, although he confesses he'd love to write another book.
"I've already done one book on the Australian influence on American TV," he
says, "now I'd like to write about the British influence on America -
specifically the Liverpool influence."
And speaking of British influences, Kearns is married to British television
host, journalist, and producer, Alison Holloway, and is the father of two
children: a son Sam, 5, and a daughter, Sally Jade, born in May. They live in
Pacific Palisades, California.
Kearns, now 45, doesn't especially espouse graduate school for journalists
but instead advises those who are drawn to the industry to take a job on a
small town newspaper and learn the ropes. "Just get out there and do it," he
says. He believes Tabloid Baby would be a useful teaching tool for
journalism students, not necessarily as a primer but perhaps a cautionary
tale. "It shows that even though I didn't have a mentor in television or news,
I was able to learn my way around."
He says he "misses the friendships, the competition, the excitement of
grabbing a story and owning it, as well as all the danger that went with the
decisions we made." However, life now is better than ever in ways he "never
would have imagined. I didn't get married or have children until I was 40," he
says, but "being a father is the greatest responsibility I've ever undertaken.
And the most rewarding."
By Nancy C. Lilley M.A. '85, Media Relations
Specialist
He never lived on campus. In his sophomore year at
Fairfield he moved to a shack on the beach behind the Nautilus where his band,
The Hormones, played punk rock for beers. And though he was taking a full
course load as an English major and working 30 hours a week at a gun factory
in Southport, he still found time to direct the programming at the
University's radio station, WVOF, which provided an outlet for his creative,
restless nature. His hectic schedule must have foreshadowed things to come
since, ten years after graduating, this Fairfield University alumnus propelled
himself to the forefront of the biggest revolution to hit broadcast journalism
since Edward R. Murrow presided over the coronation of CBS News in the 1950s.
"During this time we had all these stories to ourselves
because network news was so far removed from everyday American life. The men
behind ACA were foreigners who had a far better understanding of the national
psyche then the network newspeople who spent their careers in windowless
rooms. The Australians were experienced cynical newspaper veterans. For them,
news-telling wasn't the privilege of the elite.
Who would have thought that the angel-faced Fairfield graduate (top right), would one day help usher in the tabloid TV revolution? At top (l-r), Kearns and field producer Wayne Darwen do their "Booze Brothers" routine, a lifestyle each has since left behind.
The wild, heady days of showgirls, late-night
scripting (with attorney Rafael Abramovitz at his side), and producing tabloid
TV are a thing of the past. Today, Burt Kearns has turned his attention to
more mainstream pursuits, including the joys of parenting Sam (below, now 5)
and Sally Jade (3 months) with his wife, Alison.
Page courtesy of Fall 2001 FairfieldNow
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