This Just In! We’re Hot! Hot! Back to You, Kelly

At KNBC-TV Channel 4, the message is the messenger.

Such energy, such zest, such exuberance, such adoration. How thrilled was the station about its triumphant standing in the November ratings sweeps? So thrilled that the biggest story in its 11 p.m. news last Wednesday was none other than you know who.

Itself.

No class, no shame. For evidence, let’s go to the transcript.

Anchor Paul Moyer: “Balloons, music and the NBC family--it was the recipe for a great celebration tonight.” And there it was, videotape of Channel 4 anchors and other employees dancing.

Anchor Kelly Lange: “Oh-oh.”

Moyer: “What a dork.”

Lange: “You and me, Paul.”

Moyer: “Right upstairs in our Channel 4 newsroom.”

Lange: “Oh, no.”

Moyer: “Oh man. Take it off, take it off, get it off.”

Lange: “Oh.”

Moyer: “Oh please, God.”

Now came a graphic: Celebration!

Moyer to the camera: “It was you making us the No. 1 station in Southern California, and for that we have something to say.”

Group of employees: “Thank you!”

Moyer: “And thank you to Carol Black, president of NBC-4, for throwing the best party this station has ever seen, dancing notwithstanding, though.”

Again, videotape of employees partying.

Lange: “She’s a great dancer, though.”

Moyer: “She’s wonderful.”

So were they all . . . wonderful. So wonderful that on and on they went, returning to their favorite topic, themselves, even after a station break.

Sportscaster Fred Roggin: “You know the lesson . . . we’ve learned from tonight’s party?”

Moyer: “What is that, Fred?”

Roggin: “Never dance in front of a hot camera.”

Moyer: “Thank you.”

Lange: “We didn’t know.”

Moyer: “We didn’t know it was there.”

Lange: “We had no clue.”

Moyer: “We were shocked.”

Lange: “We were having a good time.”

Moyer: “Absolutely shocked.”

Lange: “Yeah.”

Roggin: “Well, that’s the lesson we’ve learned.”

Lange: “We have learned that lesson, sir.”

Moyer: “It’s a tough lesson.”

And they call this a newscast? Well, at least Channel 4’s incestuous embrace of itself had finally ended.

Until after the next station break.

Lange: “And now back by popular demand, more of our party.”

Moyer: “You asked for it, you got it.”

Lange: “Yes, you asked for it.”

More video of dancing.

Lange: “Oh, isn’t this awful? There’s the big guy, there’s me, there’s all our pals, there’s Carol Black, our general manager.”

Moyer: “She really can dance.”

Lange: “We’re No. 1 . . . yes, No. 1 in Southern California.”

Moyer: “Thanks, everybody.”

Lange: “You like us, you really like us.”

Not nearly as much as they like themselves.

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SELF-LOVE II: Cable’s TBS celebrates its 20th anniversary next week. But “Behind the Scenes at People Magazine,” its soft, slobbery, fawning documentary airing Sunday, is nothing to toast.

TBS says the program was planned prior to its parent company, Turner Broadcasting System Inc., entering a larger corporate family. Still, in case anyone’s forgotten, TBS is now a property of Time Warner Inc., which also owns People Magazine.

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WHEN VIDEOS ATTACK: TV’s latest humans-in-peril fixation extended last week even to the NBC daytime series “Leeza.” And predictably, some of it was pretty ghastly.

One episode of “Leeza” featured the co-stars of a home video already shown on the syndicated “Real TV” and the Fox special “When Animals Attack II.” You know, the one showing a man being assaulted by a rare species of predatory elk that savagely pummels helpless hunters as the hunters’ wives capture on video the dirty work these antlered homicidal maniacs do to their husbands. It’s said that the elk, in addition to being mad killers, are such hams that they refuse to attack unless a camera is present.

Rapt host Leeza Gibbons listened to the couple’s story about the video, whose excerpts this time included a section omitted from “When Animals Attack II,” presumably because it didn’t quite fit the Fox show’s premise. At one point, as the deer stood docilely over its victim, who lay on the ground, the hunter took the initiative, reaching up and grasping the animal in a headlock, then pulling it down and wrestling it. The man was obviously in terrible danger from the devil deer. How terrible?

So terrible that his wife, instead of rushing to her husband’s aid, bravely kept right on taping.

Then on Friday, a “Leeza” hour titled “I Escaped Death” included survivors of a blizzard in Nepal, a boating accident that set a family adrift for 26 days and a train derailment in Arizona--all legitimate horror stories.

Just as striking, though, were visual teases, deployed throughout the program, of what Gibbons described as “the amazing attack video you won’t want to miss.” The promotional visuals briefly showed an encounter between a caged panda and a man.

The full panda segment was naturally withheld until the end of the hour, and grisly it was. Somewhere in Asia, a man was sitting on a ledge outside a caged enclosure, with his back to it, when suddenly the panda inside reached through the bars and tugged at the man’s jacket. Someone came to the man’s aid and pulled him away, but the panda managed to pull off the jacket and was last shown rolling on the ground with it.

The man was saved but, tragically, it was too late to rescue the defenseless jacket, limp and lifeless in the clutches of the vicious panda.

Funny thing, though, that a camera would be centered on a man sitting quietly in front of a cage in the first place. And that another man was earlier shown in the same video jumping up and getting away after being tapped by the panda. Almost as if this whole thing were some kind of a setup?

Nahhhhhh.

In any case, the incident reminded me of the extreme peril I face daily from my two killer cockatiels, one of which is especially sadistic, pacing his cage floor with such savage fury that he creates gusts powerful enough to blow me from the house into on-coming traffic consisting of cars the size of stampeding buffalo capable of trampling to death sweet, innocent children. What have buffalo got against children, anyway?

And those cockatiels, with their cute orange cheeks and cute little crests. Who do they think they’re fooling with their act, trying to put me at ease so that I’ll sit with my back to their cage and allow them to pull me through and peck me to death?

On the other hand, if my wife had a video of it, she could sell it to TV with the title “When Cockatiels Attack.”