A Media Blitz in Florida for Smith Rape Trial : Legal: Jury selection is about to begin for case involving Sen. Kennedy’s nephew. Networks don’t plan to alter schedules, but coverage will be extensive, especially by tabloid shows.

In some people’s minds, jury selection might not rank with the siege of Iraq as a big-time news story.

But network news correspondents, tabloid TV programs and the 6-month-old Court TV cable channel soon will be descending upon Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Mary Lupo’s courtroom, even though nothing much is scheduled to happen beyond a little voir dire.

The event isn’t war, but the trial promises to be the most intensely scrutinized courtroom drama since Raymond Burr returned to prime time.

William Kennedy Smith’s trial for the alleged rape of a 29-year-old woman he met on a pub crawl last March 30 opens shortly in Florida. The fact that his uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), accompanied Smith on his outing and then was at the Kennedy compound in West Palm Beach while the rape allegedly occurred accounts for the unprecedented requests for press credentials, which one county official estimated to be well over 100.

American Lawyer Media’s new Court TV channel will supply the pool coverage of the proceedings, including the trial, which is not scheduled to begin until early December.

“We’ll be providing two feeds from inside the courtroom,” said Court TV executive producer Steve Cohen. “One will be an untouched feed for anyone who wants it, but there will be a second feed which will have the name of the rape victim, or any other rape victim, blanked out.”

Cohen said that the fledgling cable channel has a standing policy of not using rape victims’ names on the air itself and encourages other broadcasters to do the same, but will offer both versions to any broadcast organization that wants them.

In an action for which it was severely criticized last spring, NBC News followed the lead of the supermarket tabloid the Globe and the New York Times in revealing the name of the Jupiter, Fla., woman who made the charge against Smith.

Cohen said that a 20-second delay will be imposed on its own “live” feed of the trial coverage in order to bleep out the woman’s name.

None of the three major networks plans to break into its normal programming with anything live from the Palm Beach County Courthouse, though spokesmen for ABC, NBC and CBS said it was likely they would do so with reports from Madrid, where Mideast peace talks are scheduled to get under way today.

The early-evening tabloid news shows will all be covering the trial, though. “Hard Copy,” “Inside Edition” and “A Current Affair” all have producer-correspondent teams holed up in West Palm Beach hotels for the duration.

“No one is going to be convicted or acquitted tomorrow,” said Scott Rappaport, the “Inside Edition” reporter who will be covering the story for that syndicated show. “But you’ve got to remember that it’s going to be the biggest trial of the year and it is going to be a huge media story. That’s what we’ll be covering ourselves the first day: the army of media that have gone down there.”