TURBULENT AIR VALUE OF NEWS COPTERS QUESTIONED.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Staff Writer

The report came in over the police scanner just after 3 p.m.: major traffic collision in Burbank.

Time to fly.

Within minutes, Larry Welk, a pilot-reporter for KCAL-TV (Channel 9), and cameraman Gil Leyvas were hovering 1,400 feet over the crash scene where an MTA bus and a Ford Explorer had collided. Ten people were injured.

Soon, four more news helicopters and a police chopper joined them, all trying to get the best shot of the collision - and all trying to avoid planes from nearby Burbank Airport.

Welcome to Los Angeles' crowded skies. This is the era of airborne journalism and breathless TV anchors. Live! Breaking news! Continuous coverage shot from a circling helicopter.

Television stations tout the value of reaching news events quickly, with a perspective impossible for land-bound reporters.

Undeniably, the live action makes for riveting viewing. But critics point out chopper coverage often sensationalizes minor events and trivializes the news itself - all to justify the thousands of dollars spent keeping L.A.'s TV fleet of a dozen ``telecopters'' aloft every day.

``They have these toys and they want to use them,'' said Rick Marks, a broadcast journalism professor at California State University, Northridge, and former KNBC-TV (Channel 4) news producer. ``And they use them for everything. So suddenly something that's not a news story - some of these chases - becomes news because you have the technology to show these things.''

And as in the case of the news chopper crash at Van Nuys Airport during the Academy Awards, the helicopters themselves can become the story for TV news.

Welk joins other reporters and news directors who contend they provide a valuable service to the public, often by showing a view of events that a ground reporter can't provide.

``Do I think they're abusing the helicopter? Not at all,'' said Welk, grandson of TV's famed music conductor Lawrence Welk.

Airborne reporters said breaking news events are difficult to predict, so any car chase or fire can end up with a dramatic outcome, even if it starts out slowly.

``I've been on car chases where the guy's been leaning out the window shooting at cops,'' said KNBC pilot/reporter Bob Pettee. ``I've seen kids or people thrown out of cars by the bad guys after they hijack a car. How do you know what's going to happen or who's in there 'til you get there?''

Welk said he's occasionally been sent on stories that ended up being not newsworthy. Similarly, ground reporters now more frequently do live on-location shots hours after an event has ended, simply to add immediacy to their report.

Broadcast professionals note that with helicopter rates up to $1,000 an hour, news directors know they have to be careful not to abuse them.

Yet Roger Bell, news director of KCBS-TV (Channel 2), acknowledged that sometimes stations can get carried away using helicopters.

``If you're asking can the technology be overused or abused, I think absolutely,'' Bell said.

``I think a lot of us in the television and newspaper journalism world have raised that question, in terms of what kinds of stories are we covering with it? Are we getting carried away sometimes, covering stories that don't have the significance of an O.J. chase or a major fire?''

But it's a tough question to answer, Bell said, because a segment of the audience wants to watch car chases, even insignificant ones, and their needs - and ratings boosts - have to be balanced against those of viewers interested in substantive issues.

``They've proven on ratings if you don't cover the car chase, the opposition gets all the rating points,'' said Joe Saltzman, associate dean of University of Southern California's communications school.

``It's a live event and people will always be fascinated with live events because of the unusual and unexpected. You know that at any second something horrible can happen, something that's not scripted or planned.''

< The first telecopters used in the 1960s were rather limited in range. In fact, they couldn't rise much more than 50 feet off the ground - the length of the camera's cable.

Camera operators once wore a harness, leaned out of the chopper and held the camera on their shoulders, delivering a shaky picture at best.

Today, cameramen like Welk's partner Leyvas sit inside and control the camera with a joystick for a picture that is gyro-stabilized to adjust for the flight's bumps.

After Pettee's chopper took a bullet during the Rodney King riots, he recalled, his station bought the new technology, and other stations followed.

The industry was dealt a major wakeup call in 1998, when stations went live to a man who had parked his pickup truck on an overpass of the Harbor and Century freeways to protest health maintenance organizations. The man suddenly committed suicide - on live TV.

At least one station was airing the drama live at a time when children were watching TV after school, recalled KABC-AM (790) radio traffic reporter Jorge Jarrin.

``A couple of the stations were on a tight close-up at the moment he pulled out the shotgun, put it under his chin and pulled the trigger. It was very graphic.''

Stations said they would use a tape delay or pull back if incidents could become too graphic - although how often they have done so is open to question.

Pettee said his station installed a button that allows him to quickly switch cameras to one focused on him inside the chopper.

He hasn't used the button yet, he said, although in retrospect he wishes he had last week when covering a story in Tarzana about a man trapped in a trench. Thinking the man was still alive and had been saved by firefighters, Pettee's cameraman panned down to the man's body.

``We came back and it was obvious at that point the fire people had given up, and I said, Pull back, pull back. I wasn't prepared for that because I thought he he was alive.

``That's one of the things that we grapple with in live television.''

< Following last Sunday's crash, the reporters union said it has been struggling to give more control over flight decisions to reporters and pilots, rather than news directors and helicopter companies.

The local American Federation of Television and Radio Artists filed a grievance two weeks before the crash, requesting safety information about Van Nuys-based Helinet Aviation, which provides choppers for five L.A. stations.

While KTTV-TV (Channel 11) officials said they agreed with the concerns, and commissioned an independent safety audit, Helinet officials said they have an excellent safety record and have never before had an incident involving an electronic journalist. They also said they don't pressure pilots to fly against their better judgment.

``The bottom line really is this: The helicopter company management is never going to pressure a pilot to fly,'' said Helinet Vice President Dave Corsello. ``A pilot getting in the aircraft is going to make the decision. It's their decision to fly or not fly.''

Since the early days of helicopter journalism, there have been crashes. They include Francis Gary Powers - the famed U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 - who in 1977 died returning from a story when his helicopter ran out of fuel, crashing in Encino.

Welk, who helped guide KTTV chopper pilot Kris Kelley back to Van Nuys last Sunday night, said flying and reporting can be tricky - and he's had a few close calls.

``The thing about news flying that makes it different is it's easy for the pilot to get caught up in the story and forget to concentrate on the flight,'' Welk said.

``It's not hard for me, though, because I want to go home to my kids every night. There's not a story in the world that's worth risking that.''

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Larry Welk, KCAL-TV (Channel 9) helicopter pilot and news reporter, flies over downtown Los Angeles.

(2 -- 3 -- color) A news helicopter flies over a Burbank neighborhood while covering a story. Critics claim chopper coverage often sensationalizes minor events and trivializes the news itself - all to justify the thousands of dollars spent keeping TV's fleet of a dozen ``telecopters'' aloft. above L.A. At top, pictures from a KABC (Channel 7) helicopter are aired live.

(4) Larry Welk, KCAL helicopter pilot and news reporter, checks out his aircraft before taking off on a spot news assignment from Burbank Airport.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer