Attention, Fliers: Keep Your Eye On The TV Lights

Put your seat backs and tray tables in the upright and fully locked position. Or, as they say in the subways at the airport, "Please hold on to a handrail. Notice the lighted display for the next destination."

Concourse A: Maybe you haven't noticed, but new CBS affiliate KSTW-TV (Channel 11) is not yet airborne. News director Charlie Johnson expects the station will have its leased helicopter flying sometime next week.

The main reason for the delay, said Johnson, was the installation of ENG - electronic news-gathering - equipment. But there also was a problem involving certification of the pilot originally assigned by the chopper's owner, West Coast Helicopters of Van Nuys, Calif.

The new pilot, Brad Jensen, was to ferry "Sky Eye" up from California this weekend. He will join Roger Fox of KOMO-TV ("Air 4"), Tom Murphy of KING-TV ("Sky KING") and Clark Stahl of KIRO-TV ("Chopper 7"), who are eager to get Jensen in the loop.

Media pilots here have a long tradition of communicating with each other when the sky gets crowded. They even have a gentlemen's agreement about altitude assignments based on who gets to the scene of news first.

"We have a perfect safety record," Stahl says of Seattle TV helicopters. "We'd like to continue that."

Concourse B: Some pretty big names of the air get inducted tonight into the Silver Circle of the Seattle Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, at the Sheraton

Hotel:

-- Stan Boreson, the accordion-playing host of "KING's Klubhouse" (1949 to 1967 on Channel 5).

-- KOMO-TV home economist Ruth Fratt, known on the air for 22 years as Katherine Wise.

-- Gary Justice, the longtime KIRO-TV anchor who recently quit to work as an investment counselor.

-- Bob Newman, makeup artist at public KCTS-TV (Channel 9), who for 21 years played Gertrude, the sidekick of clown J.P. Patches, on KIRO-TV.

-- Craig Smith, program director at KING-TV from 1988 until his death last summer from complications of a bone-marrow operation.

Concourse C: Letters flew recently after the March 11 broadcast by KING-TV of a videotaped denial by arson-and-murder suspect Martin Pang.

KIRO, KOMO and KSTW say KING should have shared the tape. KING says it had every right not to and warned the other stations about their rebroadcast of the Pang denial.

The tiff started when KING's report included a shot of the videocassette with a note attached.

"We received the tape from a confidential source, and there was a note on the tape," said KING news director Andy Beers. "Basically it said to `please duplicate and hand-deliver to press,' or something like that.

"This was clearly a note to the person who received the tape" from Pang - the intermediary, Beers said. KING got the tape "with the understanding that it was given to us for our exclusive use," and KING decided to honor the conditions of the delivering source.

Said Bill Lord, news director at KIRO-TV: "If Martin Pang's note said `duplicate for media,' it should have been duplicated for the media. That would include radio, television, newspapers and magazines - it should have been available to everyone."

Federal regulations prohibit one station from rebroadcasting content from another without permission, but KIRO, KOMO and KSTW all decided the Pang tape was an exception.

KSTW news director Johnson cited the compelling news value and agreed with the other stations' news directors that the tape was intended for all media. Lord and KOMO-TV news director Jacques Natz noted that KING didn't own the copyright to the tape.

Baggage claim: Finally tonight, this ad from two broadcasting trade weeklies:

"NEWS PROMOTION PRODUCER/WRITER: If you are a witty and creative writer and can grab our viewers' attention, KIRO-TV in Seattle is searching for you. . . . We will give the entire kingdom for a talented teaser writer (if we had a kingdom!) . . ."

TV-Radio Beat appears on Fridays in The Seattle Times. Electronic-media reporter Chuck Taylor can be reached at 464-8524 or on the Internet at ctay-new@seatimes.com.