TRANSCRIPT
Show:FOX THE EDGE WITH PAULA ZAHN
Date: December 1, 1999
Time: 22:45
Head: "Tabloid Baby": A Look at Tabloid Television
Paula Zahn with Burt Kearns
PAULA ZAHN:
Who can resist tabloid TV? You know them, shows consisting of celebrities, drugs, politicians, and, of course, we can't forget sex. Well, some people must, because the ratings for these kind of shows give so-called real journalists fits.
Well, everyone hears the guy (ph) you can blame or think--or thank, depending on your point of view. Burt Kearns was there at the beginning as a producer for "Hard Copy" and "A Current Affair," and more recently the very cerebral special, "When Good Pets Go Bad 2." He has chronicled his deliciously cheesy adventures in a new book called "Tabloid Baby."
Good to see you.
BURT KEARNS: Thanks for having me.
ZAHN: So you're the guy that responsible for ruining television?
KEARNS: I have to take some of the blame for that, yes. But it was a lot of fun. And I really can't take responsibility for ruining it, because it was originally entertainment. That's what tabloid television was. And somehow it became news.
ZAHN: Well, it became news because it became profitable, right? Isn't--and isn't it true that the legitimate journalists started borrowing more and more the techniques you used...
KEARNS: Yes, but...
ZAHN: ... hence blurring the lines between legitimate journalism and tabloid journalism?
KEARNS: Part of it was, it's hard to remember that 10 years ago, there were certain stories, there were certain parts of America the networks didn't cover. And that left it wide open for a show like ``A Current Affair'' to come in, and cover those stories that people talked about around the water cooler.
They were everything from the preppie murder case to the Rob Lowe sex tape. It's a story that everybody talked about, but you wouldn't see it on the networks.
ZAHN: And the way you covered the William Kennedy Smith trial too was sort of record-breaking, wasn't it? Because wasn't that at the point where the networks started seizing interests in these...
KEARNS: Well, that was amazing, I was ``Hard''...
ZAHN: ... bawdier stories?
KEARNS: ... I was at ``Hard Copy'' at the time. And it was the day after Easter Sunday. And we get a phone call that there was an arrest at--in Palm Beach, the nephew of a United States senator was being accused of rape. The senator himself was a material witness. A Rhode Island state senator was another witness. No one covered it. I was at ``Hard Copy,'' I was the only one covering it for a week.
The networks jumped on board about five days later, covering the media covering the story. And then eventually we just...
ZAHN: Which somehow made it more legitimate for us to be covering the story, right?
KEARNS: (inaudible) cake and you got to eat it too. But eventually we saw that a story like that, which was, quote, ``sleazy,'' or tabloid, ended up having great impact, because a few months later Clarence Thomas was trying to become--or they wanted to make Clarence Thomas a Supreme Court justice. He got involved in a sex harassment scandal. And Ted Kennedy, the voice of liberalism, couldn't say a word, because he was shamed for what happened in Palm Beach.
ZAHN: What story in particular is the one that you think really blurred the line between what a mainstream broadcast entity would cover and what tabloid would tackle? Was it the O.J. Simpson trial?
KEARNS: I think the O.J. Simpson trial was the time at which the networks said, We have to start covering this, there's no way around it. We're a tabloid nation.
These stories are important. They may be stories that are very personal, they may be small, it may be a husband and a wife having a fight which ends in death. But it has resonance around to the rest of the nation.
By that point, the networks were covering O.J. Simpson from the morning shows till late at night, and there was no reason for tabloid any more. The tabloid shows really couldn't offer anything different.
ZAHN: But you still continued to cover it, you just backed off a little from the way you would have approached it months before, or...
KEARNS: No, I think--I think that was the time ``A Current Affair'' went off the air, actually. The ratings for ``Current Affair'' went--just went totally down because people stopped watching the tabloid shows. We were getting preempted by network specials about the O.J. trial.
ZAHN: Now, one of the things you're not shy about in the book is admitting to how ratings-driven these shows are.
KEARNS: They always were. I mean...
ZAHN: Given it--give us just a crazy example of a story that you put on the air that you knew would generate either heat or ratings, and it was just the most ridiculous story you'd ever heard.
KEARNS: The most ridiculous story I ever heard had to be--well, the Rob Lowe sex video was the first. That was one where there was a--you know, a movie star went down to the Democratic Convention in Atlanta. During the day he was the poster boy for young, hip liberalism. And then at night he was going out and videotaping his sexual escapades.
We found out about that tape. We had to get it. Well, we ended up having to steal it in order to get it on the air. Nobody else was covering the story...
ZAHN: How did you steal a tape? And that couldn't have made you very proud of what you were doing.
KEARNS: Oh, we were very proud of stealing the tape, because if we didn't steal it, the nation wouldn't see it.
ZAHN: Come on, how did you do it?
KEARNS: Well, the--a station in Atlanta...
ZAHN: Come clean.
KEARNS: ... a station in Atlanta had gotten the tape from the D.A. They wouldn't give it to us. So when they aired it, we went to a hotel room and we videotaped it off the hotel television set, and then we squeezed in the picture to get rid of the chirons so you couldn't see the--you know, the graphics from that station. Except we didn't squeeze it quite tight enough, and the news director saw the line and sued us.
ZAHN: Oooh. Now, those of us that are working for mainstream broadcasted organizations would like to view ourselves differently than the tabloids. How do you see it? Because in your book, you talk about how you think ``Dateline'' really is no different from the stuff that you did on ``Current Affair.''
KEARNS: Well, the stories are the same, the way they're told are the same. The secret is that you look at shows like ``48 Hours 2,'' ``Dateline,'' ``20/20,'' the same people are staffing those shows now, the, quote, ``tabloid babies'' are now running the networks. And...
ZAHN: So all the guys that you used to work with, and gals, at these different tabloid shows have now moved up or...
KEARNS: (inaudible)--You work into these upwards or across...
ZAHN: Or--yes.
KEARNS: ... or however you want to say it...
ZAHN: Laterally.
KEARNS: ... but yes, I mean, tabloid television lives on, but in a much more respectable form.
ZAHN: You have taken some heat through your career for really lowering the standards of the American public. I mean, do you buy that? Do you think it's powerful...
KEARNS: I think...
ZAHN: ... for watching...
KEARNS: ... I think that tabloid television...
ZAHN: ... junk?
KEARNS: Tabloid television was--first of all, it was sort of the Comedy Central of, quote, ``news.'' I mean, you used to get your local news at 6, your network news at 7, and you'd get the dessert at 7:30, the fun stuff people talked about
Nobody thought we were news. But soon the networks thought we were news, because we were making money. I think that the standards started to be lowered as the people who ran the tabloid shows wanted to, quote, ``clean them up,'' and brought network people in to take over our jobs.
And (inaudible)...
ZAHN: Well, I want you to know, we are trying to maintain the highest of standards right here on THE EDGE. And Burt...
KEARNS: And you do.
ZAHN: ... we appreciate your dropping by.
KEARNS: Thanks for having me.
ZAHN: Thanks, that was a fun read. I laughed out loud at some of the parts.
KEARNS: Thanks.
ZAHN: We're going to be right back with our EDGE Image of the Day.
(22:52)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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