Anchors Away!

Dave Helling has narrowly escaped the suck zone.

In the last hour, the KCTV Channel 5 anchor has scrambled to cover a meeting at the Capitol in Jefferson City and fended off a tow truck driver who threatened to impound Channel 5's illegally parked SUV. He has spliced sound bites on a glitch-prone editing machine and waited helplessly while Greg "Mundo" Mundkowsky, the satellite-truck wizard, crawled around frantically switching wires and turning knobs to fix a transmitter that wasn't doing what it was supposed to -- beam Helling's voice and image up to a satellite 23,000 miles above the equator and back down to a dish in Johnson County. In the suck zone, everything goes wrong while seconds race toward the deadline for broadcast.

Helling misses his cue for the 5 p.m. newscast. But at ten minutes after the hour, Mundo pushes the right button and gets the transmitter working again. Helling puts together a live dispatch to close out the broadcast. Now he can work at a normal pace. He calls producer Becky Schieber, who sits at a desk in Channel 5's Fairway newsroom, and dictates an introduction for his next live report, which she types into the script for the 6 p.m. show.

"City officials are ecstatic about reaction to taxpayer support for the Truman Sports Complex," Helling says in a TV-news tone, though he is off the air. "Some lawmakers not from our area aren't so sure. The state legislature held its first hearing today on plans to spend more than 300 million taxpayer dollarsfor upgrades at Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums." He pauses to allow Schieber's typing to catch up. "Dave Helling is freezing his ass off in Jefferson City for a stupid live shot. And he joins us now for more. Dave, how fuckin' cold is it?"

Extremely fuckin' cold. It's just past sunset in late February, and the temperature at the state Capitol cowers just below 20 degrees. Helling buttons his overcoat against the lip-splitting wind and steps out of the satellite truck to stand before a camera aimed at the Capitol steps and dome. Waiting for his cue, he leans over and eyes his reflection in the camera's lens. He licks his fingers and tames a cowlick in his boyish hair. His teeth are clenched, braced against the frozen gusts. Through a tiny earphone he hears his cue and begins effortlessly reciting the news. At the end of his spiel, technicians in Channel 5's studio flip switches, and viewers watch sound bites from people Helling interviewed earlier in the day. While Helling waits for another cue to close out his 90-second report, a thin bead of mucus collects at the corner of his nose. He shudders, thinking, "I'd better wrap this up, or I'm going to have a big loogie running down my face."

Helling's report from Jefferson City is no big scoop --just a handful of Kansas City's power brokers trying to convince a bunch of pols that debt is actually "new money" and that rich sports-team owners need welfare to survive. Any nightside reporter working his way up the broadcast-news hierarchy could have suffered through the assignment. But for Helling it was an opportunity to hone his competitive edge.

Between interviews, newsmakers took him aside and whispered story tips in his ear, leads that will eventually crystallize into exclusive reports. Though Helling and his colleagues at Channel 5 have been Kansas City's second most popular -- and, in turn, second most profitable -- news team for more than a decade, grueling days like this make Helling feel a tad superior to Larry Moore, Helling's affable counterpart at the perennially top-ranked station, KMBC Channel 9. "The reality is that if you went and sat with Larry tonight, you wouldn't be real busy," Helling says with all the diplomacy he can muster.

"Three-hundred-forty-four stories and counting."

Channel 5's latest glitzy promotion touts wolf-eyed, news-junkie anchors who "don't just read the news ...they cover it!"

This "Anchors Who Report" blitz appears to be an innovative new image for the station -- something it clearly needs. As second dog in this TV news market, the station earns less money than its nemesis, Channel 9. A lot less. The mere 1 percent or 2 percent difference in ratings points between the two stations costs Channel 5 several hundred dollars for each 30-second ad -- several million dollars a year. So Channel 5 executives have launched an all-out effort to be number one.

Meredith Corporation, the Des Moines-based company that owns Channel 5, has a new president of its broadcast division who, unlike some of his predecessors, actually has TV news experience. The station also has a zealous new general manager who intends to take it to the top of Kansas City's market by 2005. Longtime staffers say they've seen more changes during the last several months than they have in decades.

"Anchors Who Report" is just one of the changes, but it isn't Channel 5's new image. The station doesn't have one.

A local TV station's image typically boils down to a single slogan. Kansas City's stations offer "Coverage You Can Count On" (Channel 9); "Kansas City In-Depth" (KSHB Channel 41); "Working 4 You" (WDAF Channel 4); and until recently, Channel 5's "News That Makes a Difference." Station executives agonize over these slogans. They pay consultants hundreds of thousands of dollars to help develop them. They toil for hours in meetings, arguing at times over the merits of one word. They recruit carefully selected "average" viewers to form focus groups and scrutinize the phrases as if they're possible titles for a new Jim Carrey movie. But for all that, audiences tend to ignore slogans. "There are slogans in every market," says Channel 5 executive producer Shawn Bohs. "But they mean nothing."