'Benben' producer closes book on 'good experience' of canceled show

Robert Borden finally got around to returning TVKC's call last week. Even though "The Brian Benben Show," the sitcom he created and executive produced, had been canceled two weeks earlier by CBS, the Kansas City native still was obligated to finish the episode he was taping on the day of the pink slip. Since then he had been holed up in an editing studio, working on a episode no one will likely see. "I just finished the other day, and since then I've been sleeping and getting back a little of a life," Borden said. Just this summer Borden was sweating the million-and-one details that every new "show runner" - TV-speak for the person in charge - worries about. His biggest challenge was filling a room with writers he'd never worked with before. He told me he felt like a detective, asking around about job candidates, trying to figure out if, impressive credits notwithstanding ("Cheers," "Mad About You"), they actually had any material make it on the air. Ultimately, Borden solved most of his problems - most. "I would say it was a good experience with one exception, which is the ratings," he said. "I liked it, the Warner Bros. people and the CBS people liked it, and I think we did a show we didn't have to be ashamed of. But basically, it was on the wrong network. And the network agreed." So now Borden, who is under contract to Warner Bros. for the next year-plus, will work on other shows, like the Norm Macdonald sitcom being developed for ABC. Any other plans for Borden? "We're going to get all the actors together and go have dinner and too much wine somewhere." The 'Truthwatch' hurts Longtime WDAF, Channel 4 reporter and anchor Dave Helling is in his element. Just last weekend, 11 new political ads hit the airwaves, most of them attack ads. For Helling, whose "Truthwatch" feature airs nightly on WDAF's early-evening news, it was glorious grist for the mill. Take the ad in which Democrat Dennis Moore charges his opponent, Rep. Vince Snowbarger, with voting "against needed special education funding" and approving "tax breaks to golfers." On its face it sounds ludicrous - and, Helling said, it is. "You go and check the record and you find that Snowbarger voted to increase funding above the base appropriation. " The congressman's sin was settling for a $ 20 million hike rather than $ 25 million. That kind of funhouse-mirror trick comes as no surprise to Helling, who has done "Truthwatch" for a decade and has yet to see the negative campaign commercial that tells the truth. "Candidate A never quotes Candidate B's record accurately; votes are always taken out of context," Helling said. Helling knows that 80 percent of the voters rely primarily on these ads for information about candidates. Yet for all this, "Truthwatch" hasn't made him cynical on the democratic process. "I think we've helped the public be much more skeptical about what they see in campaign ads," he said. "I've had literally hundreds of people come up to me over the past 10 years and say, 'I've seen that ad, but I'm waiting to see what you have to say about it. ' " Look for a "Best of Truthwatch" compendium on the 9 p.m. newscast Sunday. StarTouch: (816) 889-7827 and enter 8852 (TVKC). E-mail: writeme@tvbarn.com