Miami’s notorious Channel 7 broadcasts possibly the scariest -some say sleaziest –newcasts in the country. For eight hours of its programming day, “South Florida’s News Station” covers murders, fires, rapes, stalkers, drive-bys, wild dogs, “Kids Who Kill,” “The One-Hour Orgasm.” It’s CNN meets “Hard Copy,” tabloid sensationalism so intensely lurid that nine south Florida hotels decided this month to screen out 7’s signal, fearing its crime-packed newscasts might further freak out already spooked tourists.
If it bleeds, it leads. WSVN’s news is frequently delivered in body bags, stamped with logos like “Mauled to Death” or “Tiny Victims.” Sex is another staple: bikini-clad high-school volleyball players pose “for their very own pinup poster.” A promo boasts “Over 350 stories every day.” Of course, many of them are the same story, repeated over and over again. When a Bengal tiger fatally mauled a zookeeper, WSVN covered the death 17 times in a single day, with video of the victim’s bloody body.
The flash-and-trash style of this Fox affiliate has been imitated in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities. Last month Fox chairman Lucie Salhany hailed WSVN as “the future of television.” When WSVN’s owner, Sunbeam Television, bought Boston’s WHDH last year, former governor Michael Dukakis led a campaign to keep its “bizarre, tragic and bloody” news out of Beantown. A tamer version of its sister station in Miami, WHDH has picked up ratings but is still No. 3 in the market.
Visually, WSVN is a riveting spectacle, with its slick graphics, hand-held cameras and a 25,000-square-foot set called the Newsplex that looks like something from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” “Plex it, baby, plex it!” barks producer Kelley Shields into her headset, ordering a camera shot of this high-tech HQ five minutes and 22 seconds into the 5 o’clock news last week. After rewriting the intro to a report on “Rambo termites” in Broward County, she feeds it to sober, jowly anchorman Rick Sanchez. A typical one-hour newscast can belt out as many as 50 stories. Shirt-sleeved young reporters with “Melrose Place” looks emote shamelessly at crime scenes, lingering over sentences like “Her throat had been cut so severely that her head was cut almost completely off.” Anchors lean into the camera and warn gravely, “You may not want your children to watch this.” An in-house composer heightens the drama.
“We have reinvented the way television news is done on a daily basis,” says Joel Cheatwood, senior VP of Sunbeam Television Corp. After WSVN lost its NBC affiliation in 1989, Cheatwood helped concoct the station’s new format: news packaged as entertainment. The station is now No. 2 in the ratings, trailing WPLG (owned by NEWSWEEK’S parent, The Washington Post Company), but leads among young and ethnic viewers. Miami Herald TV critic Hal Boedeker calls WSVN “the station people love to hate.” When anchorman Sanchez walked onstage at Joe Robbie stadium during a benefit concert for Hurricane Andrew victims, he was booed. Sanchez’s talent, Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen wrote recently is his ability to “make a routine domestic shooting sound like a sniper attack at an orphanage.”
WSVN hypes news and non-news alike in its quest to deliver what one promo bills as “stories that chill the flesh and warm the heart.” On a slow news day in south Florida, it’ll import tales of murder and mayhem from around the globe. “Maybe in a perfect world everyone would be watching ‘MaeNeil/Lehrer’,” says Ed Ansin, Sunbeam Televisions mild-mannered millionaire owner. “But we can’t afford to be boring.” WSVN is capable of real journalism. The Herald’s Boedeker cites its post-hurricane coverage and a series by Sanchez on returning to his native Cuba. And the station isn’t immune to community backlash. “There has been an effort toward a little more balance,” says one WSVN staffer. “To pull away from the in-your-face style, which would include crime coverage.” Meanwhile, the area’s low-rated WCIX has gone to the other extreme, toning down its violent content and calling its news “family sensitive,” a label that several other stations around the country have also adopted.
Radio and Television News Directors Association president Dave Bartlett calls the hotel blackout “silly.” As for sensitivity to Miami’s tourism trade, Bartlett notes cynically, “Nielsen doesn’t count German tourists in the ratings.” Advertisers seem to agree: WSVN reportedly made a healthy $20 million in profit on about $55 million in revenues last year. Such is the allure of Chicken Little news. The sky is falling. Film at 10.
Miami’s WSVN probably wouldn’t like its news programming described as “all crime, all the time.” The station also airs investigative pieces, women’s health features and stories of interest to the Cuban community, among the murders, sex scandals and natural disasters. Below, highlights from a typical news day: June 7,1994, from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Zookeeper mauled by tiger (story aired 17 times). Headless body found (six times). Store clerk shoots and kills would-be robber (14 times). Missing teenage girl found dead on roof, apparently died after inhaling Freon (three times). Four dead in, Tampa plane crash. Man shot to death by police after daring them to kill him.
Flesh-eating bacteria (14 times). Student-drinking crisis (seven times). Triplets born to artificially inseminated couple (four times). Women’s health issues (14 times).
Colombia quake (11 times). Plane crash in China (six times). Tidal wave in Java.
Mom mourns baby killed by her boyfriend (five times). Four kids and uncle dead in home fire (two times), Father poisons baby’s milk (three times). Mysterious “chewing gum poisoning” in grade school turns out to be caused by sleeping pills (four times). Albany, N.Y., child left in car dies of heat exhaustion. Second-grade girl sexually abused by three classmates. School roof collapses under weight of pigeon droppings.
Trial set for drag-racer who killed motorists (five times). Gainesville, Fla., killer is ruled unable to profit from students’ deaths (seven times). Kmartbombing suspect arrested (three times). Suspected drug dealer, 16, accused of murder; will be tried as an adult (four times). County postmaster arrested for growing marijuana in her yard across from school.
Cuban writer defects to U.S. (two times). Refugees claim attack at sea by Cuban government (two times).
High-school girls’ volleyball team poses in bikinis (two times). “Price Is Right” sexual harassment suit (eight times). Teenage sex habits (three times). Woman accuses Michael Jackson of raping her and fathering her child.
Woman slashes boss in attempted robbery; wanted money for daughter’s beauty pageant (five times). Man shot by jealous archer (six times). Dog attacks grandmother (three times). Teens find body, keep it for days. Carjackers lead cops on chase, escape (six times).
