KTTV ‘Affair’ Near Pinnacle of Tabloid TV

It helps to wear a gas mask when watching “A Current Affair.� Otherwise, you could be overcome by the fumes.

The syndicated Fox series, airing here at 10:30 weeknights on KTTV Channel 11, frequently reeks in its quest to reach the pinnacle of tabloid TV. But Monday’s lead segment--reviewing the calamitous life of the late NBC anchorwoman/correspondent Jessica Savitch--really stunk up the place.

Savitch died in an auto accident Oct. 24, 1983. And now her tumultuous career and personal life are the subject of “Almost Golden� by Gwenda Blair, a book that some members of Savitch’s family charge is distorted and full of untruths.

It was a highly solicitous “Current Affair� reporter who asked Savitch’s mother, Florence Savitch, on Monday’s broadcast: “Are you now, because of all the publicity, reliving this tragedy?�

“Yes, indeed,� she softly replied. “It’s been 4 1/2 years. (Now) it’s all back, right at our front door.� Blair’s book, she said, is “really breakin’ my heart.�

No matter the merits of the book (it’s been endorsed by some of Savitch’s former colleagues), one can empathize with the pain of Savitch’s family in seeing her life publicly assessed so frankly and critically. And the “Current Affair� reporter’s sensitivity to Florence Savitch’s grief was laudable.

Yet where was all that care and concern for the family earlier in the segment, when actors and tingly music were used to re-enact how the car in which Savitch was riding with newspaper executive Martin Fischbein on the night of their deaths made a wrong turn and plunged into a canal?

“When police found the car, they didn’t know who the victims were until they washed the mud off Jessica’s face,� said the reporter, off camera. As he spoke, a ghastly face filled the screen, looking very much like the real Savitch in death, trapped behind the car’s windshield.

Did “A Current Affair� wonder if seeing that would break Florence Savitch’s heart? Did it wonder about anything?

Here is a series where taste and tawdriness merge. So much so that the Jessica Savitch death mask almost eclipsed the the segment’s other flaws and excesses. Almost.

To begin with, “A Current Affair� host Maury Povich began by saying that Savitch had been “on her way to superstar status at the network� when she died. Actually, her career was in dramatic decline.

True to its sensational fashion, the program played up Savitch’s alleged drug use and bisexuality--which Blair only lightly touches upon in her book--and ignored the apparent root causes of Savitch’s failure at NBC after a glittering career in local news. According to Blair, Savitch was hired by the network at age 30 because of the way she looked and anchored, then was virtually cast aside because of her failings as a reporter.

“A Current Affair� interviewed Savitch’s sisters, Stephanie and Lori, who rejected Blair’s conclusions and characterized her as a “grave robber.� Or as Povich announced in his unique fashion: Savitch’s family “lashed out at what they call the unsubstantiated life that Jessica allegedly lived.�

Yet there was no mention during the program of a second book on Savitch, the soon-to-be-published “Golden Girl� by Alanna Nash, which reportedly reaches basically the same conclusions as Blair’s.

And finally, Stephanie Savitch defiantly declared that her sister’s death in the canal “had absolutely nothing to do with her life.� But who said it did? Certainly not Blair.

It’s fetching to see “A Current Affair� play the role of journalistic arbitrator when, in fact, this program is to journalism what wrestler Andre the Giant is to toe dancing. The idea of “A Current Affair� raising an eyebrow at Blair’s alleged exploitation of Savitch is the epitome of hypocrisy for a predatory program that itself feeds on exploitation.

Although surely no news program despite its news-like format, “A Current Affair� gets flow-in credibility from the preceding 10 p.m. newscast on Channel 11. A half-hour that covers only titillating stories and regularly employs such distorting devices as music and dramatic re-creations to put a spin on reality, it got the 10:30 time slot after KTTV cut back its hour news to 30 minutes because research showed that the audience drops off considerably in the second half of a prime-time news hour.

Meanwhile, some skeptics believe not merely that “A Current Affair� could become the local news nightmare of the future, but that, in fact, the future may already have arrived.

Look closely and you’ll notice that the line separating it and the fun-filled 11 p.m. newscasts of KNBC Channel 4 and KABC-TV Channel 7, for example, is getting ever more blurry. And the unsubstantiated lives that these newscasts allegedly live are becoming more unsubstantiated.

Allegedly.