Television News

Host Susan Modaress is trying to get London correspondent Roshan Mohammed Saleh on the satellite link to talk about the tasks ahead for Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown. "Hello, London?" says the host of the show "Four Corners" on Iran's new English-language news channel, Press TV. "Can you hear me, London?" Silence and darkness gape back. She quickly moves on, trying to reach Tony Benn, a former member of Parliament with Brown's Labor Party. He's also not on the line.

This just in! There's no more news on TV, at least not on the cable news networks. Plain old news apparently just isn't good enough anymore, so TV news stories have been getting new and improved names. President Bush's latest news conference? CNN labels it a "Developing Story." A car bombing in Baghdad? The banner on MSNBC reads "Breaking News." A blown transformer in New York City? Fox News Channel is on it, with a graphic that announces "Very Latest." Sometimes a story is a "News Alert."

It was Roger Ailes who came up with the slogan "First in Business News" for CNBC when he was running the channel. Now, he's determined to knock it into second place. Ailes is a key architect of News Corp.'s new Fox Business Network. The channel, which is scheduled to launch Oct. 15, helped drive media mogul Rupert Murdoch's pursuit of Dow Jones & Co. News Corp. won its $5-billion bid for the company, which owns the Wall Street Journal, this week.

Los Angeles television newscaster Mirthala Salinas was suspended without pay for two months -- but not dismissed -- Thursday from KVEA-TV Channel 52 for covering Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa while they were romantically involved, a relationship that journalism experts said damaged the station's credibility. Three of Salinas' superiors with the Telemundo network also were disciplined, including the top two station officials.

If you hate women, men, Texas, Los Angeles, television news and any of the social progress made by Americans in the 20th century, then "Anchorwoman" is the show for you. On the new Fox reality series, Phil Hurley, owner of the struggling KYTX in Tyler, Texas, has hired Lauren Jones, L.A. model, WWE spokeswoman and general bombshell, to anchor the news, despite the fact (or because of it) that she has no previous news experience. Let the catfighting and dumb blond jokes begin!

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reinforced her position as the Democratic presidential front-runner Sunday as she executed the rare feat of appearing on all five major TV talk shows in one morning, defending her new healthcare proposal and vowing to oppose any Iraq war funding unless it is tied to starting a U.S. troop withdrawal.

NEW YORK -- PBS dominated the field Monday during the 28th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, racking up 10 wins for programs that tackled topics such as the sex-slave trade, scientific research on chimpanzees and the war in Iraq. The commercial broadcast and cable networks trailed substantially: CBS, in second place, won half as many awards, most of them for "60 Minutes." NBC and Discovery Channel followed with three wins each. Cinemax garnered two, and ABC and CNN each got one.

Linda Alvarez, a presence in local television news for the last 22 years, will be leaving her current duties at KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCAL-TV Channel 9 on Sunday. The 12-time Emmy winner, who became the first Latina to anchor weekday newscasts for an English-language television station in Los Angeles in 1986, joined KCBS as an anchor and reporter in 1993 and has worked for both CBS and KCAL since the stations became a duopoly five years ago, KCBS said Wednesday.

BALTIMORE -- Yolanda Vazquez watched a news broadcast on a high-definition television for the first time with mixed emotions. She was impressed by the way it rendered the anchors in such vivid detail. "It's amazing," she said, "like you're not in 3-D but in 15-D." But awe gave way to self-conscious jitters once Vazquez, a reporter and anchor at Maryland Public Television, realized that her turn in front of an HD camera was coming.

In the back room of a Tehran apartment, a young assistant was busy hanging indigo-blue fabric on yellow walls. A small video camera was set up to face a news anchor's desk, and a big hole in the wall awaited the last-minute delivery of a soundproof glass pane. The set was thrown together to tape the inaugural broadcast of Saba TV, a station aspiring to provide an alternative voice, in Persian and from Iran, to programming monopolized by hard-liners.