By Valerie Kuklenski

Staff Writer

Sometimes the skies over Southern California look like a scene out of "Apocalypse Now" as news helicopters hover over an area. All that's missing is "Ride of the Valkyries" being pumped in over loudspeakers.
This happens when area stations are covering some breaking event, and you see the copters traveling in a pack above an orbiting police chopper, or hanging thousands of feet above a blaze being battled by firefighters.

And sometimes what they capture is explosive - such as last week when news choppers from KABC-TV (Channel 7) and KTTV-TV (Channel 11) filmed an African-American suspect being roughed up by an LAPD officer. The incident recalled the Rodney King beating and made national news.

Usually, though, what you see is more mundane: helicopters hovering over a particularly clogged stretch of freeway and passing the information on to us grounded commuters.

When KTLA-TV (Channel 5) introduced helicopters to television news coverage in 1959, they were seen by some as a gimmick, albeit an expensive and interesting one.

Forty-five years later, "It would be hard to imagine television news coverage without a helicopter," says KNBC-TV (Channel 4) vice president and news director Bob Long, a veteran of the sprawling Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., markets. Between the vast five-county market TV stations serve and our legendary traffic volume, ground reporters struggle to get from one scene to another.

"Helicopters have become for us what the military calls force multipliers, in that by going out and taking a look, we can assess the situation and make decisions about committing those scarce ground resources," he says. "It's a tool that really pays for itself in a number of ways that are vital to the audience, I think."

It paid off on June 23 when the Channel 7 copter piloted by Scott Reiff and the Channel 11 chopper with reporter Gina Silva were out in the early morning covering traffic when they followed a car chase in Compton. The result was the dramatic footage of an LAPD officer hitting a suspect with a flashlight.

Jose Rios, vice president and news director for KTTV and KCOP-TV (Channel 13), said the tip on the pursuit first came over the police scanners. "Our assignment desk heard it - they let the helicopter know. It can happen that way," he says. "It can happen that the helicopter hears some radio traffic. It can be that they just come across it or see a police helicopter in the sky and go check it out."

KABC general manager Arnie Kleiner says he was unaware of the specifics regarding the pursuit but says Channel 7 helicopter pilots "look for things that are unusual in traffic."

Though the incident caught on camera caused a stir, the LAPD says the relationship between the police and news helicopters is "very good."

Sgt. Catherine Plows, a spokeswoman for the LAPD, says news helicopters aren't intrusive. "The only time we've made a request for them not to film is during a tactical situation," she says, explaining that there's always the off-chance the person being pursued may be watching TV. In fact, Plows says having news helicopters in the air is helpful, such as in a recent accident on Sepulveda Boulevard at the San Diego (405) Freeway that the LAPD didn't know about.

The teams in the air for the television stations are led by seasoned aviators who take pleasure in defying gravity every day. Accompanied by camera operators who control and edit the 360-degree views from front-mounted cameras, some pilots do double duty as on-air reporters, while others leave the broadcasting to the TV veterans.

While the stations (and these include channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 34) compete fiercely for exclusives and firsts, especially during ratings periods, the helicopter crews work with a spirit of cooperation and camaraderie.

"I've never seen anything quite like it elsewhere, only because of the scale here," Long says. "There are more news helicopters in the sky here than anywhere else by a considerable margin. And they fly more because our weather conditions and terrain and flight restrictions - or lack thereof - permit more extensive operations.

"So these aviators have to cooperate with each other. This is not a strictly journalistic enterprise. It's an aircraft, often in traffic, and I think it's wonderful that the pilots all know each other - it's a fraternity - and are communicating constantly. This is in our best interest."

Pilot Mike Case, right, and Cameraman/reporter Justin Jaeger cover morning news for KNBC (Phil McCarten / Staff Photographer)

KNBC pilot Mike Case says when helicopters were covering the environmentalists protesting the removal of an ancient oak in Box Canyon, it was the aviators who agreed among themselves at dusk that they would quit for the day, not anyone's producer or news director. Viewers may have noticed on major breaking stories that rival stations will share aerial feeds when one helicopter needs when one helicopter needs to set down for fuel or a mechanical problem. It's an informal arrangement that benefits everyone at one time or another.

"Once you've paid the price of admission, then everybody gets to go to the show," Long says.

Jennifer York, KTLA's popular morning traffic reporter who has been flying over L.A. for 16 years, says the cooperation in the air is "flawless."

"It's like a club," she says. "We never see each other because we're always flying, but everybody trusts everybody."Yeah, it's competitive. Somebody launches and won't say where they're going because it's Fox wanting to beat (Channel) 5. But once you're up there, it's all about safety. There's never a problem with that, ever."

Case, a veteran chopper observer and pilot with the Los Angeles Police Department, was recruited to fly for KNBC part-time while he still was on the force and became the station's regular morning pilot-reporter in 2000 after his LAPD retirement. He is relieved at midday by Justin Jaeger, while Chip Paige covers the night flights.

While York presents a peppy morning personality who can enthuse about a gorgeous sunrise when the freeways are rather uneventful, Case brings his cop experience to the job, taking tips from inside sources and keeping an even tone in his voice while he advises neighbors to stay inside while SWAT officers look for a bad guy.

"The interesting part of the job is just summing up what you see, telling it in a story form that is easily understood and is interesting in less than a minute, without too many mistakes. I'm still working on that," Case added with a laugh.

Case wasn't trained in broadcasting, so he relies on his police department experience of flying, watching ground activity, flipping through his map book and talking into a headset - multitasking at 1,200 feet.

"I think most people who do it are self-taught," he says. "I have a big mouth and like to fly, so they kind of go hand in hand."

York, who has won Emmys for her part in the coverage of the Northridge Earthquake and the 1993 Malibu fires, says the job involves quick judgment, particularly when covering an unfolding scene of violence. Police may ask crews to maintain a higher altitude and not disclose their location to a gunman with a hostage, while a news producer may press for a view that would let neighbors identify the area and understand the danger.

"There's just a whole bunch of ramifications," she says. "It's a fine line between being informative and not being informative."

Case is a voice-only reporter (he claims he has been told he has a face for radio), while York is on camera with every report. She has a way of maintaining stage presence - she plays bass with her York Quartet Thursday evenings at Twin Palms in Old Town Pasadena - that she developed with her band.

"If you've got moods, leave them at the gig door, because on TV when the red light comes on, you've got to act like nothing is happening in your life (and) you're there to please," York says.

Long says the pilots and on-air reporters are a breed apart from the journalists on the street.

"This isn't a bunch of ink-stained wretches, old photogs in their fedoras and Grafexes hoping to break the other guy's glass negative to get the shot," he says.

"These are helicopters flying over densely populated areas, and they're flown by pilots, by aviators, not by guys in fedoras. So what we might do in a crowded situation, professional aviators are not going to do, amd that's why they're there."

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Valerie Kuklenski, (818) 713-3750 valerie.kuklenski@dailynews.com