Public TV: Extra

Adversity sometimes rewards its victims. For seven weeks, San Francisco’s two major daily newspapers were shut down by a strike. There was a good chance that the dispute would be settled this week. Meanwhile, TV had undertaken a successful rescue program that promises to become a minor trend. During the newspaper blackout, KQED’s public TV channel went on the air with a nightly one-hour Newspaper of the Air. And it was just that: a “city room” peopled with staffers from the striking papers who made up their feature and news “pages” before the camera.

While one editor read the news, the others quipped their way through the facts to get at the nub of the important stories. There was even an Inquiring Reporter—a girl with the engaging name of Novella O’Hara. What gave the program added interest was the obvious absence of calculated showmanship and a willingness to forgo pictorial values for the sake of the news itself. Viewer response was so great that KQED now plans to make Newspaper of the Air a regular weekly staple.