Television Industry Los Angeles

It was the end of the TV season, and Lynn Loring didn't want to be a studio executive any longer. Loring, the child actress who grew up to be president of MGM/UA Television Productions, was not having a good day. Six months into a three-year contract to fill one of Hollywood's most powerful positions, Loring was announcing her retirement. "This will probably be my last three years," Loring said emphatically during a conversation last July.

Azteca America began broadcasting on its newly built Los Angeles station--KAZA-TV Channel 54--last weekend, limping into the burgeoning Spanish-language network market. Though the Los Angeles station can reach nearly one-fifth of the nation's Latino households, the new broadcast outlet represents a scaled-down version of Azteca's ambitious plans.

Twentieth Century Fox Television and the producers of "The X-Files" are quietly looking at whether the Truth Is Out There in Los Angeles. Studio executives and staffers have been intensely exploring how they can move the home base of the atmospheric Fox series from rainy Vancouver to sunny Los Angeles next season.

Major anchor changes, format shifts and fiercely fought newscast battles marked the just-completed February sweeps, with KNBC-TV continuing its dominance of the important 11 p.m. slot, and KABC-TV staying on top of the afternoon news race, according to local Nielsen figures released Thursday. Hotly contested races included the traditional 10 p.m. face-off between KTLA-TV and KTTV-TV.

As a black man seeking to anchor a weeknight TV newscast, Hosea Sanders was warned by well-wishers not to come to Los Angeles. "One of the things people told me was, 'Be careful about that market. If you have any aspirations of being a lead anchor, give it up in L.A., because as a black man, it's just not going to happen.'

Veteran newscaster Jerry Dunphy's recent leap to KHJ Channel 9 after 14 years at KABC Channel 7 just might trigger another round of the local TV industry's most popular game, "musical anchors," in which local anchors switch stations in search of a better position.

KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCAL-TV Channel 9 were the big winners at the 44th annual Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards. KCBS topped the field with 11 winners among the 53 categories, including awards for best 30-minute newscast(its 6 p.m. broadcast), mini-doc series, investigative reporting and news reporting. KCAL, meanwhile, captured 10 awards, including the Emmy for best 60-minute newscast (for its 10 p.m. broadcast) and seven other news-related categories.

Ad agencies usually produce 30-second commercials--not 30-minute TV shows. But don't tell that to David Suissa. The Santa Monica adman has plans to turn his advertising know-how into television show-how. The offbeat ad firm he founded six years ago, Suissa & Associates, has formed a subsidiary that will use the talents of the same employees who now create ads for such gambling resorts as the Tropicana in Las Vegas and Harvey's in Lake Tahoe to develop ideas for TV shows and feature films.

Sparked by complaints of racism and sexism at KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KNBC-TV Channel 4, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said Wednesday that it will initiate an investigation into the hiring and treatment of minorities and women in newsrooms at all seven major local commercial TV stations.

Hollywood literary agent Lisa Santos, all of 22, is sitting in her office eating Girl Scout cookies. "I used to sell these, you know," she says, chomping on a peanut-butter cookie. Her tousled brown hair flips back as she emits a bawdy laugh. Of course, she knows that it wasn't that long ago that she was a Girl Scout, and she isn't about to apologize for it.

Azteca America Inc., which hopes to become the country's third Spanish-language television network, has received Federal Communications Commission approval to construct a full-power Los Angeles station. The approval brings the number of stations Azteca America owns or is in the final stages of acquiring to 12, said Chairman and Chief Executive Harry Pappas. Pappas also owns half a dozen stations in smaller markets that could eventually be converted to Azteca stations.

While the actors strike is apparently nearing an end, its long-term impact on Los Angeles' commercial-production industry has yet to be determined. Even before actors walked off the job six months ago, local production was being hurt by advertising agencies shooting commercials in less costly locations, most notably Vancouver and Toronto. The strike exacerbated that trend and now it's unclear whether advertisers who have grown accustomed to foreign shoots will quickly return to Los Angeles.

I watched the 11 o'clock news Wednesday night on Channel 4, because I'd already been watching that channel for two hours, to see how President Sheen got shot. The prez had been directly in the line of fire when last season's last episode of NBC's "The West Wing" came to an end. A gun went bang and everybody ducked. We had to wait all summer to see who caught more flak, Martin Sheen or his flacks. Somebody asked me to guess which West Winger got winged.

Shooting of commercials on the streets of Los Angeles plunged again in September as Southern California ad production continued to dry up amid the 5-month-old strike by actors against the advertising industry. The number of shooting days devoted to commercials fell 68% during the month to just 168, compared with 533 a year ago, according to the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., the agency that issues permits for most of Los Angeles County.

KCAL-TV was the big winner in the 52nd annual Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards, picking up nine statuettes in such core categories as live news, sports and special events. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences ceremony was held Saturday night at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. The breakdown of Emmy wins by station was: KCAL with nine; KCOP and KCBS with five each; KABC and KTTV with four apiece; Fox Sports Net and Fox Sports Net2, two each; and Adelphi Cable, KCET, KMEX, KTLA, KVEA and L.A.

Nearly a decade ago, relations between the motion picture and television industry and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles were incendiary. To borrow a phrase of Hollywood hype, it was a clash of titans, two institutions--perhaps second only to the family--with the power to influence values, form consciences, present role models and motivate human behavior.

After 17 years working either as an actress or production coordinator, Deborah White says the industry she loved can no longer sustain her financially, so she has bought a log house in Taos, N.M., and plans to begin life anew there. Joe Straw and Anton Holden, an out-of-work production accountant and a sound editor, decided that if they can't find jobs in the movies anymore, they will just make their own movies.

When "A Piece of My Heart" opened as a rental production at the Odyssey Theatre Oct. 23, it may have looked like just another opening, another show in one of the many 99-seat houses that dot L.A. But with Scott Valentine ("Family Ties") in the lead and nearly $50,000 of playwright-producer Matt Cooper's own money footing the bill, there's a whole other agenda at work. "I want two things," says Cooper, seated in the lobby of the West L.A.

So you're here to visit hollywood? allow me to be your guide. The tour bus won't go to Universal Studios or cruise past movie stars' homes. In fact, it's not a bus at all. Today's transportation will be an aging Toyota, which I'm definitely going to replace when I sell my first screenplay.

Petitions bearing more than 75,000 signatures urging Gov. Gray Davis to help stop the flow of film productions to Canada were presented to him Monday. Members of the Film and Television Action Committee unveiled the petitions--mostly signed by production assistants, stunt performers and other film industry workers--at a news conference.