FIRE COVERAGE A GROUP EFFORT FOR LOCAL TV NEWS.

Byline: DAVID KRONKE

>TV CRITIC

As the wildfires continued to roar throughout Southern California on Monday, local television news divisions, like the firefighters, found themselves stretched thin while covering the tragedy. But they devoted huge swaths of their airtime to the story.

Paul Button, assistant news director for KCBS Channel 2 and KCAL Channnel 9, said Monday afternoon, "We have reporters across all day parts covering this. Every bit of personnel we have is working from sunup to sundown. Everyone who works and freelances for us is covering this. We're taxing our staff to the absolute maximum."

Both KCBS and KNBC began coverage on Monday at 4 a.m. KCAL joined in the coverage at 9 a.m., though it occasionally broke for commercials. The networks all began coverage early -- around 7 a.m. -- on Sunday, with KNBC interrupting reportage only to air its primetime football game. KCBS also aired football coverage, as well as its primetime programming. The stations all stayed live on the air with the story until midnight.

KABC was also on the air with the story most of Monday and devoted most of its Sunday airtime to the fires until its primetime programming bloc. KTTV had a helicopter already in the air Sunday morning, so it got the first pictures of the Malibu fire; later in the day, it kicked its coverage over to KCOP while it aired football and baseball playoff games.

"It's a logistical nightmare," said Jose Rios vice president of news for KTTV. "It's spread all over the place." Rios said his station has dispatched a clutch of reporters to San Diego, but was unable to fly them there due to high winds.

KNBC has 16 reporters on the ground, said Bob Long, vice president and news director for the station, who added that the logistics for covering a story of this magnitude were daunting.

"We have a huge coverage area to begin with," he said. "Every day, getting around is difficult. This is stretching us very thin and we have asked for help from our Bay Area sister station, KNTV. San Diego has its hands full with a very dangerous fire there.

"The biggest problem from an editorial standpoint is that our reporters have to have time to gather information and not have them doing TV constantly. They're reporting for NBC affiliates, on MSNBC, they're doing network feeds. We're talking 12 hours a shift. We need to make sure they put the microphone down and gather information."

The dangerous nature of the story exacerbates the reporters' jobs, Long added.

"The physical conditions are extremely difficult," he said. "They're close to smoke, embers, they have water falling on them. It's tough to breathe out there."

Button added, "Logistically, this is such a massive undertaking, covering such a wide area with all kinds of terrain. It's hard to get television signals out of some areas. We're deploying equipment to areas where they could be in harm's way. It's a delicate balancing act, deploying our reporters and equipment through the width and breadth of our coverage area and ensuring everyone stays safe."

Local stations agreed to pool feeds from their helicopters hovering over the out-of-control flames.

"With a truly major disaster like this, competition is a facet that goes out the window," Button said. "We're letting the other stations use our choppers while theirs go in for refueling. Yes, there's a competition between stations, but in situations like this, it's all about trying to get information out."

As fires raged, almost all of the reporters in the field have been displaced at one point or another in the past couple of days.

"It doesn't matter if they're on air, or if they're about to go on the air," Button said. "If firefighters tell them they gotta go, then they gotta go. But there hasn't been any dramatic situation where they were about to be overrun."

Long said none of his reporters have encountered any close scrapes during these wildfires, either.

"No one's reported anything untoward," he said. "There's just been the normal risk inherent in covering disasters.

KTLA, Channel 5, and KCOP, Channel 13, aired regular programming Monday, a smattering of shows featuring judges and dysfunctional families bickering on "Jerry Springer" or "Maury."

David Kronke, [phone]

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