Swaying the Home Jury

By Massimo Calabresi/New York

At Luke's Hair Design in Somers, New York, the main topic of TV conversation these days is not Jessica Fletcher's latest murder mystery or Roseanne Connor's most recent family crisis. It is the fate of Lyle and Erik Menendez, the Beverly Hills, California, brothers awaiting a verdict on charges of murdering their parents. "One way or another, every day it comes up in conversation," says Rosalie Mignano, 29, a nail technician at the salon. "I've really come to care about them as people."

Stanley Orlen, a former New York City policeman now living in suburban Long Island, was so involved in the trial in late November that he was reluctant to go into surgery because he might miss the final arguments to the jury. "The surgery wasn't important; missing the summation of the trial was more important," he says. "Do you call that being hooked?" Holly Hunter, at least according to her Tonight Show testimony, is an addict. So are hundreds of lawyers, journalists and an armchair judiciary of ordinary viewers who have abandoned Luke and Laura on General Hospital for the really hot soap opera of the new TV season: the Menendez trial, covered live and virtually gavel-to- gavel on Court TV.

Since it was launched in July 1991 by legal journalist and editor Steven Brill, the Courtroom Television Network (of which Time Warner is part owner) has immersed cable viewers in the slow, sometimes tedious, often mesmerizing workings of the American judicial system. With 47 states now allowing cameras in the courtroom, the channel has broadcast such high-profile proceedings as the William Kennedy Smith rape trial, the insanity defense of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the parole hearings of Charles Manson and his followers. But nothing has brought it quite so much attention as the Menendez case. Says senior vice president Merrill Brown: "It has sustained viewer interest in a way that we didn't believe previously a trial of this length could."

For a relatively small cable network (currently seen in 14.1 million homes), Court TV has surprisingly strong ratings. In the first Nielsen survey of its viewership in October, the channel ranked No. 4 during the day among cable viewers who receive it. Yet Court TV executives are reluctant to credit the Menendez trial with boosting viewership; they would rather have advertisers and cable systems believe the network's audience is stable and continuous, not simply tuning in for the big trials. There are evidently still some doubts: the channel is not yet making money, though Brill says it is slightly ahead of its business plan.

Court TV has embarked on an effort to broaden its programming beyond its staple of live trial coverage. The network runs hourly judicial-news updates all day and weekly prime-time segments on consumer law, small-claims courts, * and parole and death-penalty issues. This month it will introduce The System, a weekly show that Brill describes as a "nonfiction Law & Order," tracking cases from arrest to judgment. On-air personalities like Cynthia McFadden (who has just been hired away by ABC News) and Terry Moran (who is covering the Menendez trial) have gained a devoted following.

Critics of Court TV charge that it focuses excessively on the most sensational and salacious cases in an effort to boost ratings. "Coverage of trials is a good idea," says Alan Dershowitz, the attorney and Harvard Law professor. "The way Court TV does it is a bad idea. Virtually all they cover is sex, gore and pornography." Far better, suggests Dershowitz, would be a nonprofit, C-SPAN-style channel, which would give viewers access to a broader range of cases.

Brill rejects such criticism, arguing that Court TV spends most of its time on unspectacular cases, from medical malpractice suits to the legal battle last month in the Delaware Supreme Court between QVC and Viacom over Paramount. "We could do a rape and grisly murder trial every minute of our 24 hours if we wanted to," says Brill. "That's not what I want to do for a living."

Nevertheless, the channel is hardly shying away from the big cases. It has already won approval to cover the trial of Lorena Bobbitt, charged with cutting off her husband's penis, and it hopes to air the trials of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and alleged serial killer Joel Rifkin. Brill insists that Court TV's just-the-facts approach is a healthy antidote to the fictionalized treatment such cases routinely get in network TV movies. "There'll probably be 58 docudramas about the Menendez brothers' trial," he says. "But ((the producers)) will probably be a little more honest because they know so many people have watched the real thing."