THE MEDIUM IS MURDER

When pushy but lightweight newscaster Lauren Michael airs the first segment of her Mistress-to-the-Powerful series, KYY anchorman William Hecklepeck refuses to introduce it, considering it tabloid television. But when Lauren is strangled with a mike cord, his investigative instincts leap to the fore and he's in hot pursuit of her murderer. While he and co-worker Richard hide Lauren's mistress tapes from the cops, a St. Louis newspaper television columnist suggests that a memorial be erected to Lauren, and the two men are almost stampeded by picketers but manage to track down the taped mistresses, including Lauren's neighbor Sonya. Close examination of the tapes leads them back to another Lauren story, a suspicious fire in '76 and a familiar face in the crowd. On air, Hecklepeck announces the perpetrator of the real-estate/building scam behind the fire, and all of St. Louis, or at least the part of it tuned in to the news, watches as the guilty is handcuffed and led away by the cops, on cue. Former TV reporter McKitterick won the Suntory Award for this first effort, a fairly run-of-the-mill endeavor, with a few funny bits but hardly thigh-slappers. Undemanding, mindless fare, like much on TV.