Going for the Ghastly, This Time at KCBS

Television: Channel 2’s handling of a story about a dog killing is one more example of the effect tabloid shows are having on local news shows.

Just when you think some local newscasters can’t stoop any lower, they do.

A Los Angeles man was accused last week of killing a neighbor’s dog, then dismembering and barbecuing it--an act ghastly even to imagine.

There are some brain-dead slugs in television news, however, who insist on leaving nothing to the imagination.

The offenders this time weren’t at KABC Channel 7, which handled the dog-killing story correctly by reporting it with pictures only of the suspect’s arraignment.

Not KNBC Channel 4, though, which in breaking the story on TV felt compelled also to show the open barbecue grill on which the suspect was alleged to have done the gruesome deed. That was bad enough.

But not bad enough for KCBS Channel 2, which demonstrated its runaway lust for the grisly by adding something to the story that no responsible journalist would ever have allowed to be telecast:

Footage of the decapitated dog’s head mounted on a post.

Who’s in charge over there, Freddy Krueger?

It’s true that there will always be such excesses in American journalism. And it’s much better to have a free press that sometimes falters than a sterile one rigidly controlled from a central authority. Much better self-regulation than the steel hand of Big Brother.

But all you have to do is tune in some newscasts occasionally to reach the conclusion that such leering, slimy tabloid series as “A Current Affair” and “Hard Copy” are having an echo effect in more legitimate news operations. Local news has always been more ukulele than symphony, yet stories now seem even lighter, racier and more sensational, and there are more of them.

Add to that the crossover of personnel--Terry Murphy, for example, went from anchoring on Channels 2 and 7 to being the frantic Goddess of Gossip on “Hard Copy”--and the line separating local newscasts and tabloids is getting fuzzier and fuzzier.

Taste is something that good people can debate endlessly. Yet grotesque pictures were hardly needed to convey the horror of what happened to that poor dog and its family. That makes what Channel 2 did not simply superfluous, but disgusting.

Dream Match: The merging of television and sports is almost complete, each helping define and distort the other.

In that regard, the superstars of professional tennis have been making bundles in meaningless made-for-TV exhibitions for years. If ever anything were ill-advised, however, it’s a proposal for an event that would match resurgent oldster Jimmy Connors--who reached the semis of this year’s U.S. Open--with young Monica Seles, the world’s top-ranked woman’s player.

This reportedly would be a $1-million winner-take-all affair at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, with Connors being restricted to one serve and Seles having the advantage of being able to use the wider doubles court.

Would that give Seles the edge? Hardly. If her advisers allow her to leap from this high-rise--a 17-year-old surely has advisers, right?--it means they’ve either popped a string or been blinded by the potential glitter.

You can just envision the spectacle that would ensue. Howard Cosell, the trashiest of America’s trash sportsters, went and got religion, so he wouldn’t be available to notarize Seles vs. Connors with his presence as he did Billy Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs on ABC’s “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973. But some other big-name sportscaster could be bought off to do the job.

And Seles, who makes headlines merely by getting a haircut, perhaps would out-act even King, who presented Riggs with a live pig after arriving at the court on an Egyptian litter carried by scantily clad men.

Whatever the level of pomp, however, this neo-”Battle of the Sexes” would not be King, still near the top of her game, wiping out an aging, weak-hitting Riggs. It would be Seles playing someone who has demonstrated that he is still able to beat many of the best male players.

Be assured that Seles would lose--and badly! Perhaps without winning a game.

And in doing so, she would not only embarrass herself but also set women’s tennis back immeasurably by rearming its critics, who maintain that the better the athlete, the better the entertainment.

Not necessarily.

It’s the competition that matters most, and the competition among the elite female players is at least as intense and interesting as that of the top males. The men are better players by virtue of their quickness and power. But with the exception of the renewed Connors, the men’s circuit is a pretty lackluster TV attraction these days. Just as collegiate football and basketball are at least as entertaining on TV as are the pros--even though the level of play is inferior--so do the top women’s tennis players put on a show at least equal to that of the men.

But try selling that concept after Seles gets annihilated by Connors in a TV-manufactured gala that would prove nothing while appearing to denigrate the athletic skills of women.

Candied Camera: It’s likely that few who saw the original “Candid Camera” and marveled at Allen Funt’s genius at getting ordinary people to react hilariously to bizarre situations are smiling at its latest syndicated successor, airing at 5:30 p.m. Mondays and 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays on KABC-TV Channel 7.

What a creative disaster! By smothering gags in slick production and elaborately corny studio set-ups--and encouraging host Dom DeLuise to turn this half hour into his own slapstick comedy show--the creators of this program are obliterating what made the original show so grand.

Simplicity.