Chung's 'Tonight' is the right show for her done all wrong

I have no idea how Connie Chung, a pleasant and likable news "personality" who seems to have been on TV all my life, got herself attached to the screaming dud that is her new CNN show, "Connie Chung Tonight" (7 p.m. weekdays). After all these years, you just sort of assumed that this was the kind of show she was meant to do. Yet so far, she looks like she hasn't a clue how it's meant to be done. Last Monday's debut of "Connie Chung Tonight," in fact, will occupy a cherished spot in my video collection, right next to the opening night of "The Chevy Chase Show" on Fox and the pilot episode of "Emeril." The show was so bad that, in a sick way, it was kind of entertaining. Afterward CNN producers scurried to tone down the PlayStation sound effects and the schmaltzy voice-over guy (who sounds like the same schmaltzy voice-over guy they had doing the teases on "SportsCenter" before someone at ESPN wised up). But those were cosmetic fixes. Deeper problems remain. In the questions she asks of her guests, Chung has started to exhibit a new and embarrassing tone-deafness I don't recall from her before. It may just be first-week jitters. Or it may be that in the past a network editor was always there to clean up her segments. At any rate, during her opening-night talk with "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, Chung pressed the comedian - more insistently than she should have - about whether he had ever considered a career as a news anchor. The usually unflappable Stewart, who of course had never considered that career path, was momentarily flapped. Then Wednesday, in a needlessly combative interview with atheist Michael Newdow, who had just won an important legal victory against the Pledge of Allegiance, Chung asked such penetrating questions as, "Are you proud to be an American?" So far CNN seems to be spending more time promoting the exclusive interviews Chung gets than figuring out what to do once she gets them. The net result is a program that suggests not so much a work in progress as a work that has no idea where it is going. Chung is blessed with a precise and distinctive newsreader's voice. Her show has its own fancy set and on-screen graphics. Beyond those three things, however, there's nothing that sets her apart from, say, Leon Harris or any of the other reliable newsreaders in CNN's stable. Seems to me there are cheaper ways for CNN to get its bucket kicked by Bill O'Reilly. The five-sided beehive that forms the nerve center of our nation's military is the focus of a balanced documentary, "Inside the Pentagon," airing at 7 p.m. Thursday on the always-engaging National Geographic Channel. (Look for my profile of the channel in this week's Sunday Arts.) The Pentagon's bigness is well-known: three times the floor space of the Empire State Building, 17 miles of corridors traversed by 23,000 employees. But that's not why this building rates a two-hour cable special. It's the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, that explain "Inside the Pentagon" and form much of the program's story line. We meet survivors who miraculously walked out of the flames and carnage after an airliner rammed one side of the building. We meet the man who's overseeing the effort to have the Pentagon rebuilt by Sept. 11, 2002 (he's well ahead of schedule and way under budget, which must not endear him to his fellow defense contractors). We meet a steelworker who came down from New Jersey to work on the renovation; nearly every day he walks past the spot where his son died. The cameras capture a couple of other small dramas that unfolded during shooting of "Inside the Pentagon," including the nervous response to an envelope suspiciously discarded a few hundred feet from the entrance. Perhaps the most surprising thing you learn about the Pentagon is that people actually enjoy working there. "It's not like jumping out of airplanes with the soldiers," says the Army's Vice Chief of Staff John Keane. "I miss that association, no doubt about it. But being here is the right thing to do." Keane feels a sense of mission in his Pentagon job because it helps ensure that the bureaucracy reflects the needs of the rank and file. As the film explains, this crucial esprit de corps was missing during the dark days of Vietnam. To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com. RECOMMENDED SHOWS WEEKNIGHTS: "Daria," 9 p.m., Noggin. MTV's sardonic cartoon teen-ager returns for an encore run on "The N," Noggin's evening lineup for "tweens." THURSDAY: "Inside the Pentagon," 7 p.m., National Geographic Channel (76 on Time Warner Cable). Reviewed in today's column. SATURDAY: "Dream Chasers," 7 p.m. on A&E. Everyday people pursue extreme dreams in this smartly done hour. This week a man who enjoys parachuting goes to Norway and hurls himself off the tallest cliff I've ever seen.