TV newscasts provide fodder for comedies

‘Back to You,’ starring Kelsey Grammer as a Pittsburgh
newscaster, debuts in
September.

By ROGER CATLIN

THE HARTFORD COURANT

If people didn’t count on local television news for actual information, it would be a rich source of nightly comedy.

Its tones of self-importance, gravity and forced banter have been picked up expertly through the years on the “Weekend Update” bit on “Saturday Night Live” and, more recently, “The Daily Show.”

Secondary characters in beloved sitcoms often are the pompous, silver-haired anchor — from Ted Baxter in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to Kent Brockman in “The Simpsons.”

Will Ferrell mined some of the comedy gold, too, in the 2004 comedy “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”

And this year there’s no shortage of fun at the expense of local news. Let’s start with two reality shows set in Texas.

“Making News: Texas Style” might be the most entertaining show ever on the TV Guide Channel, where the life of a news team in small-town Texas is examined for its considerable entertainment value.

“Anchorwoman,” which debuted Wednesday on Fox, examines what happens when a bikini model is recruited to the reporting team to boost local ratings. (She’s smarter than you think, the local producers say.)

‘Back to You’

Then there is “Back to You,” a kind of can’t-miss sitcom from Fox this fall starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as co-anchors in Pittsburgh, with Fred Willard part of the cast.

“This world, I always thought, was extremely ripe for a comedy, having worked in local TV news for a couple of years,” co-executive producer Steven Levitan says.

Grammer was the perfect choice for the anchor trying to make the best of returning to a smaller market after a stab at the big city, says Christopher Lloyd, a co-producer who also worked with Grammer on “Frasier.”

“He plays big attitudes well, and pomposity,” Lloyd says. “We wanted sort of a public forum for him, which is how we wound up on the news.”

Heaton, however, had a little experience in this area.

“I used to edit news film at NBC, Channel 5, in Cleveland, in college during the summers,” she says, “which just shows you, in the ’70s, the caliber of the news there.”

Role model

She’s had role models for her co-anchor part. “Laraine Newman used to do this so great on ’Saturday Night Live,’ when she would be that reporter speaking in that sort of monotone that they do,” Heaton says.

Heaton would check out anchors in the towns she was in over the years.

“I love the hairdos and seeing the different markets,” she says. “You got your local New York anchors -- the gals who really could use a little wax on the brow. Then you get all the way to the West Coast; you know, some of them look like hookers.”

Levitan has kept in touch with some of his friends in the news world and checked out local stations in Los Angeles in preparing “Back to You.”

And he remembered a story from decades ago.

“There was an anchorman in Madison, Wis.,” he says. “It was the night that John Lennon was shot, and it was very sad. They went to the footage around The Dakota and people crying. It was very sad. You know it was a very big moment for him. They came back to him, and he went, very dramatically, ”Lennon is survived by his wife, Topo Gigio.’ “

That story, he says, has always stayed with him, telling him everything he needed to know about local news.

”There’s this great narcissism pretending to be altruism,“ he says. ”It’s just a wonderful place for a larger-than-life character to be a big fish in a small pond.“

X“Anchorwoman“ debuted Wednesday night on Fox. “Making News: Texas Style“ runs Monday nights on the TV Guide Channel. ”Back To You“ starts Sept. 19 on Fox.