Television: Neat Beat

To thousands of viewers in the Los Angeles area, station KTTV's impromptu 90-minute crime show last week was better than the big networks' M Squad, Dragnet or Highway Patrol had ever been. Instead of Lee Marvin. Jack Webb or Broderick Crawford, they saw two real hooch-soaked hoods with six hostages as they held out in a tense siege by 150 real cops and FBI agents in an Inglewood dive just outside Los Angeles.

A friend of police, KTTV Special Events Director Bill Welsh, 46, was tipped off on the story only 15 minutes after it broke. He alerted a mobile unit that fortunately was operating near the scene on another story, scurried into action himself with a second stand-by crew. Well behind came a crew from KTLA, rival of the Los Angeles Times-controlled KTTV, but it never got on the air.

Near the Beacon Bar, Welsh carried a mike and "plenty of cable," barricaded himself behind a pickup truck just 20 ft. from the Beacon's back door. Said he: "Inside I could see one of the bandits with a woman hostage. A cameraman came up the same alley with me and peeked at the action from behind a fender, giving us a dual advantage." Camera and mike captured some exciting scenes: a cop firing a tear-gas gun at a revolver-armed bandit; globs of gas routing the drunk desperadoes; a bandit's meek surrender; the collapse of the woman hostage; the recovery of the stolen cash; and interviews with the café owner, a police official and one of the hostages. KTTViewers. who Welsh claims "automatically tuned us in because we're known as specialists in special events," were even treated to a brief interview with the hoods. As he came out of the café, a shoddy silk stocking wrapped around his face, disarmed Navy-man Howard Scott, 19, glared at Welsh's microphone and snarled: "Get that thing out of there!"