‘Coast’ Visits Appealing Parts of U.S.

It won’t make anyone forget Charles Kuralt, but “Coast to Coast” is a nice, upbeat addition to CBS and to prime time’s burgeoning universe of newsmagazines.

Mostly detouring around large urban centers, it opens with an appealing segment by reporter Jennifer Laird and producer Shari Levine about an Idaho farmer who goes airborne in a one-seat open-cockpit plane, heading a formation of endangered cranes in hopes of teaching them to migrate with other wild cranes. The footage is swell, the story inspiring.

The premiere also includes a worthy triumph-over-adversity piece by reporter Cynthia Bowers and producer Liza Finley on a St. Louis psychiatrist once afflicted by the same mental illness (“I used to hear voices”) she treats in some of her patients, and an interesting but flawed profile of the colorful, coarse-talking 74-year-old mayor of Utica, N.Y., whose autocratic style angers other city leaders.

He jokes to reporter Bernard Goldberg about his crumbling, bankrupt city: “I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed that I was mayor of Utica.” Yet the story, produced by Lee Zeidman, never explains the reasons for Utica’s decline or exactly how the mayor plans to rejuvenate it beyond ridding streets of cigarette butts.

Good things are ahead in future episodes, including reporter-producer David Turecamo’s seven-day experiment affirming the kindness of rural Iowans, many going out of their way to be nice to him even though he’s a stranger. “In every case when I asked why they helped,” he says, “it was always something they learned from their parents.” No schmaltz, just America on its best behavior.

* “Coast to Coast” premieres at 9 tonight on CBS (Channel 2).