The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 373

curity, Channel 7 anchors would be well advised to use regular-guy slang and raise their eyebrows when quoting Saddam Hussein or Billy Bulger. Reporters should dress casually but stylishly, and walk and gesture as they talk to the camera. WHDH probably won't become Boston Vice right away. Being an affiliate of CBS, which traditionally has had an older audience, may hamper its appeal to young viewers, although David Lctterman's arrival could help. (Ansin denies the rumor that his eventual goal is to affiliate WHDH, like WSVN, with Fox.) Also, the raw material for tabloid news is lacking.

The Boston area had 162 murders in 1991, compared to Dade County's 361. "A lot of weird stuff happens in South Florida," says Michael Dreadcn, a former WHDH producer now at WSVN. "Where else is body Award. As news of WSVN's success spread, larger markets raided its staff. In 1990, the CBS affiliate in Chicago adopted a tabloid format and imported WSVN executives and on-air talent.

The station drew younger viewers but lost older ones. Its inability to duplicate WSVN's success, though, has not dissuaded other major-market stations, such as KCBS, in Los Angeles, from going tabloid. TO DAVID Ml'GAR, THE similarities were eerie. Both he and Ansin came from Massachusetts and inherited real estate. Both were in their 50s, divorced, with two sons and a daughter.

And both were among the last individual owners of VHF stations. Mugar had turned down a bid of $145 million for WHDH from CBS last year staffers fled WSVN, to be replaced by young, low-paid free-lancers. The newcomers lacked experience to cover complex issues, but it didn't matter, because neither the station nor its viewers noticed. Unlike Massachusetts, where many suburbanites follow Boston's mayoral race, South Florida is so balkan-ized that few residents care about Miami politics unless they live there. And even fewer are interested in the state government, based 300 miles away.

When Florida's attorney general blocked insurance companies from canceling homeowner policies after Hurricane Andrew, it was the 18th story on WSVN's 10 p.m. news. A fire in a two-story Tampa building was given better play, even though nobody was hurt "In my first few years, we weren't strangers to City and intended to refinance the station. But he could not resist a larger offer from an apparent soulmate. The station that Mugar sold to Ansin had been decimated by layoffs in 1990 and 1991.

Since then, WHDH's ratings and profits have increased, partly because CBS has replaced NBC as the top-rated network. Still, WHDH news remains third behind WCVB and WBZ, and its audience is older than advertisers like. To be sure, Ansin has revived a third-place station before. He will apply some of his WSVN miracle cure to WHDH: a larger news staff, more contemporary graphics, more live shots. It's likely that he will add more local news, starting in the 5:30 to 7 a.m.

slot. Ansin does not plan to move to Boston, but he, Leidcr, and Chcatwood will oversee WHDH from Miami. For the sake of job se I lall or the school committee," says Michael Williams, a WSVN reporter from 1984 to 1992, when he moved to rival station WTVJ. "Certainly, now, they don't often darken government halls with their shadow." Some left involuntarily. Meteorologist Bob Sopcr, one of WSVN's best-known personalities from affiliate days, disliked the new hype.

One day in 1989, an anchorman promoted the weather report by warning that a hurricane was "barreling out of control toward Miami." Sopcr reassured his audience that the storm was stationary over San Juan. When Sopcr was fired last year, thousands of people signed protest petitions. Six weeks later, Hurricane Andrew clobbered South Florida. Without Sopcr, WSVN lost credibility and viewers, while WTVj's hurricane coverage won a prestigious Pea- HO AT 'HOME 'DIRECTORY You don't need All you need is a health club. one machine.

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