Central Arkansas television stations refocus.

Andy Pearson, KTHV-TV, channel 11's new hired gun, rode back into town two weeks ago literally on his horse: his 900cc Triumph motorcycle, which carried him almost 1,100 miles from Pittsburgh.

That same week, Mark Lambert, the new news director for KARK-TV, Channel 4, was bringing up his wife and kids from south Louisiana in the family wagon when blue lights appeared and an Arkansas state trooper wrote him a warning ticket for speeding.

One can't help noting the symbolism and how it plays into Little Rock's changing television landscape.

KTHV, with a nothing-to-lose approach to the Nielsens for some time, has brought in as a news anchor the recognizable Pearson -- he was part of KATV-TV, Channel 7, for six years as it moved to the top of the ratings - to give its newscast the big push it needs to move out of third place.

KARK, on the other hand, may be feeling a sense of urgency to reverse the downward trend of its last few Nielsen books and stop the flow of talent to its competitor. The friendly Lambert is like a breath of fresh air in a newsroom ruled for the past several years by the gruff, demanding Al Sandubrae, who's now riding out his contract "on special assignment," the station says, for KARK general manager Dean Hinson.

With sports weighing heavily in their backgrounds - Lambert was a sportswriter early in his career, while Pearson still competes in adult baseball leagues - both men understand how the TV game is being played in Little Rock.

Though Sandubrae and KARK shook things up five years ago with a move to tabloid-style news journalism, the direction now is toward less flash, more solid reporting and telling the entire story - the way decade-long leader KATV continues to do it, viewers might say.

That screaming guitar introduction to KARK's news that sounds an awful lot like a caterwauling feline is now history. Also, look for fewer dizzying, walking-camera interviews with KARK reporters.

"I know it's a '90s term, but we're going to be a little more viewer-friendly," Lambert says.

The 37-year old Lambert, whose diverse background ranges from newspaper reporter to bartending to most recently being managing editor at Baton Rouge's leading TV station, WAFB, a CBS affiliate, describes himself simply as "a news person."

"I'm not a marketing guru," he says. "I'm not a wizard looking at the Nielsens. I know news. Do I have a mandate to get our numbers up? No.

"Would this station like to see better ratings? Yes. Would I like to see better ratings? Yes. But, to put it in sports terms, I know we've got to keep our eye on the ball. I want us to tell interesting stories that will make people interested in watching me."

Pearson, who turns 38 next month, was part of the anchor teams at KATV with Susan Roesgen and later with Gina Kurre in the late '80s and early '90s that critics dubbed "Ken and Barbie," but to which viewers flocked, pushing KATV past KARK in the Nielsens. While Pearson left in 1993 for Nashville, Tenn., and its lineup has changed, KATV has never relinquished its hold on the ratings.

KTHV was moribund when Pearson was last in Little Rock. He remembers it well.

"It's like night and day," he says of KTHV, which Gannett Co. bought not long after he left. Gannett in four years has put millions into the infrastructure and has expressed its commitment to a quality product.

"Back then, it was obvious KTHV had no direction," Pearson says. "The difference is now that it is a hungry company, without a doubt. That is what really attracted me to Channel 11."

KTHV, already with top-of-the-line, digital equipment and lots of talented, behind-the-scenes staffers, apparently is looking for personality in front of the camera. Pearson's predecessor, Larry Audas, who left for a news director's job in South Carolina recently, was professional in delivery but was perceived as stiff, if not arrogant. Station insiders point out that chemistry with the other anchors was lacking. Pearson should rectify that, they say.

Bob Steel, news director at KATV, says. "I don't believe this is a talent-driven market. This is a market where you've got to have the talent, but you've got to have the lead-ins and the programming and the tradition and all those kinds of things. You know, I hired Steve Barnes away from KATV when I was at KARK thinking that would kill 'era, and they put in Greg Hurst and the rest is sort of history.

"One guy is not going to do it for them. They've got to have a consistent, continual product."

But Steel and others at KATV view KTHV has the chief competitor now, even if the KARK stands between them.

Fast-Paced News

Sandubrae once had KARK on the move, closing in tightly to KATV at one point. Lambert will try a different approach to get the same results.

"This is a pretty sophisticated news market," he says. "The public is discerning, and if they don't like something, they won't watch. They'll smell a snow job, too."

Lambert prefers the straightforward reporting approach. He'll take fast-paced as long it tells "the whole story, not just half the story."

"It's about telling stories," he says. "Anything that distracts from that is a waste of time."

So, good-bye, shaky cameras? "If the moving distracts, I don't want it," he says. "If it helps tell the story, then, yeah, we-'d use it."

Lambert has already moved the bubbly meteorologist Michelle Leigh to the three evening newscasts, and striking new anchor Claudia Coffey is spelling the .overworked Denise Whitaker at 6 p.m. Whitaker has the 5 and 10 p.m. news, promos and special features. "Frankly, I think Denise was being run into the ground," says Bob Denman, the station's assistant GM. Carlton Wing, the only locally raised sportscaster in the market, has replaced Steve Sullivan, who jumped to KATV effective Oct. 1.

Not that now-morning meteorologist Mike Nicco couldn't do the job on the evening news, Lambert says, but Leigh "injects a lot of energy to the news team and she can tell you.how to dress tomorrow in a way that people can understand."

Back to Little Rock

Pearson realized his dream of reaching a big market when he went to WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh in 1995. But he readily admits that his days were numbered there - as its ownership began cutting back in various areas, the station told him earlier this year that it wouldn't pick up the option on his contract and gave him six months.

But a computer technician who had worked previously at KTHV happened to be at the Pittsburgh station and told Pearson that KTHV might be needing a an anchor. Pearson also knew a vice president in Gannett, Dick Mowery, and when Pearson planned a trip to visit friends in Little Rock such as KATV general manager Dale Nicholson, he asked Mowery if it would be out of line if he just stopped in at KTHV and met the management.

"He said, 'Yeah, go by there.' I talked to Susan [Newkirk, the KTHV GM] and Lane [Michaelsen, KTHV's news director] and it was suddenly a job interview. I liked what I saw and they liked what they saw," Pearson says.

When Audas departed, KTHV tapped Pearson, who had been relegated to doing the noon show in Pittsburgh after anchoring the market ratings-leading 5 p.m. newscast and the almost-as-popular 6 p.m. show. Pearson debuts today.

"What we're doing is why I got in the business," he said. "We're not chasing ambulances or doing stories about car wrecks with no injuries ... We're getting an actual reflection of our community through the news.

"That's the old standby. In the old days, if you told a good story you'd attract viewers. People got away from that ... We were doing tabloid style at Pittsburgh. You would think in a big market like that, they would have gotten away from that by now, but they didn't."

Pearson is described as quite likable by the people who knew him at KATV. After six good years there, however, Pearson left KATV with a contract on the table.

He deems "a total fabrication" the reports that he asked for a deal that would basically give him summer nights off, mainly to play baseball. The take-it-or-leave-it contract former KATV news director Jim Pitcock offered went unsigned, Pearson says, because his thoughts were on his dying father in California and he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. When Pearson told Pitcock one day after a 5 p.m. telecast that he had taken a job in Nashville, where his mother and other family lived, he was told he could pack up right then.

"Frankly, the way I left KATV left a bitter taste," he says.

But that animosity is long since gone, he says. And after dealing with the corporate world and the big city, Little Rock seemed inviting to a more mellower Pearson. There's a touch of regret in his voice, too, when he notes sacrifices he made moving up the career ladder - divorcing at 24, for example.

"I thought, this time I'm going to choose something I really like," he says. "I'm not going to pay attention to what the supposed career path and fast track should be. I'll go to a place where I have good friends, where it's a good quality of life ...

"A great career is nothing if you're not happy and you don't have friends."

Pearson did notice one other major change in Arkansas on his way back aboard his motorcycle.

"Why did they go and pass this 'no helmet' law?" he asks with a laugh. "I was riding down the highway and these guys went past me, hair blowing in the wind. I tried it without a helmet for two miles, but that's all I could take."

Share Trends

Changes in household share numbers among the three major Little
Rock newscasts in the past 12 months. A share is the percentage
of all viewers watching TV at a particularly time (the rating
number, not included here, would be a percentage of the entire
survey market):

            July    May    Feb.    Nov.    July
            '98     '98    '98     '97     '97

Station              6 a.m.

KATV         43     39      39      39      49
KARK         23     26      24      26      22
KTHV         10     10      11      11      14

Noon

KARK         27     29      27      27      30
KTHV         19     18      17      17      22
KATV(*)      18     22      19      19      19
Total

* - KATV shows "All My Children" instead of a news program.

5 p.m.

KATV         37     33      33      36      40
KARK         18     17      21      24      19
KTHV         13     13      12      10      13

6 p.m.

KATV         35     31      34      34      35
KARK         16     16      17      20      19
KTHV         12     12      11       9      14

10 p.m.

KATV         31     26      33      32      32
KARK         19     20      20      23      21
KTHV         15     16      17      13      17

Source: Nielsen Media Research