Shows share source

If people didn’t count on local television news for actual information, it would be a rich source of nightly comedy.

Its tones of self-importance and forced banter have been picked up expertly through the years on the “Weekend Update” bit on “Saturday Night Live” and, more recently, “The Daily Show.”

Secondary characters in beloved sitcoms often are the pompous, silver-haired anchor – from Ted Baxter in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to Kent Brockman in “The Simpsons.”

Will Ferrell mined some of the comedy gold, too, in 2004’s “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”

Local news shows also have been providing fodder for their TV entertainment counterparts, starting with two reality shows set in Texas.

“Making News: Texas Style,” which examines the life of a news team in small-town Texas, might be the most entertaining show ever on the TV Guide Channel.

Then there’s “Anchorwoman,” which debuted Wednesday on Fox, but was canceled after only one airing.

The critically panned show, which attempted to examine what happens when a bikini model is recruited to a reporting team to boost ratings, was a ratings bust itself. It drew only 2.7 million viewers, finishing a distant fourth in its time slot.

Fox still is counting on “Back to You,” a sitcom coming this fall starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as co-anchors in Pittsburgh, with Fred Willard part of the cast.

“This world, I always thought, was extremely ripe for a comedy, having worked in local TV news for a couple of years,” co-executive producer Steven Levitan says.

Grammer was the perfect choice for the anchor trying to make the best of returning to a smaller market after a stab at the big city, says Christopher Lloyd, a co-producer who also worked with him on “Frasier.”

“He plays big attitudes well, and pomposity,” Lloyd says. “We wanted sort of a public forum for him, which is how we wound up on the news.”

Heaton, however, had a little experience in this area.

“I used to edit news film at NBC, Channel 5, in Cleveland, in college during the summers,” she says – “which just shows you, in the ‘70s, the caliber of the news there.”

She’s had role models for her co-anchor part.

“Laraine Newman used to do this so great on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ when she would be that reporter speaking in that sort of monotone that they do,” Heaton says.

Heaton would check out anchors in the towns she was in over the years.

“I love the hairdos and seeing the different markets,” she says. “You got your local New York anchors – the gals who really could use a little wax on the brow.

“Then you get all the way to the West Coast; you know, some of them look like hookers.”

Levitan has kept in touch with some of his friends in the news world and checked out local stations in Los Angeles in preparing “Back to You.”

And he remembered a story from decades ago.

“There was an anchorman in Madison, Wis.,” he says. “It was the night that John Lennon was shot, and it was very sad. They went to the footage around The Dakota, and people crying. …

“They came back to (the anchor), and he went, very dramatically: ‘Lennon is survived by his wife, Topo Gigio.’ “

Lennon, of course, actually was married to Yoko Ono – not Topo, the Italian mouse puppet of “Ed Sullivan Show” fame. That story, Levitan says, has always stayed with him, telling him everything he needed to know about local news.

“There’s this great narcissism pretending to be altruism,” he says. “It’s just a wonderful place for a larger-than-life character to be a big fish in a small pond.”