Friday, Aug. 16, 2002 | 6:17 a.m.
Glance at a picture of John Daly, and you swear you've seen him somewhere before.
Chances are, you probably have -- especially if you've lived in Las Vegas for more than seven years.
Beginning in 1990 Daly served six years as the main anchor at KTNV-TV Channel 13. When he left the station he became the host for the nationally syndicated video magazine program "Real TV," in which both news and home-video footage of actual events were combined to tell a story.
Four and a half years and a new executive producer later, however, Daly left "Real TV" last year to begin his own production company, Daly Productions, in Las Vegas.
The 46-year-old former anchor has since put together a pilot for a new program, "Missing in America," which focuses on missing children and teenagers.
The Las Vegas Sun recently talked to the longtime Las Vegas resident about his new show, his thoughts on local media and the differences between actors and anchors.
Sun: Talk about your new show, "Missing in America."
JD: That is a show that I created and am hosting. It's out being sold right now. We're sending it to as many networks and production companies that work with networks as possible, and we're trying to get it out to corporate sponsors to see if they're interested. It's a show that, although we'll be going to search for missing kids, it will try to be an uplifting show. We won't be doing any stories where a child has been found murdered. We will do stories where children have been found successfully and we will find out why they were found successfully. There are a lot of successful finds out there.
We'll also have tips for parents. Marc Klaas, the father of Polly Klaas, who was killed back in 1993, is going to be on the show with us. Marc has a foundation called Klaas Kids Foundation, and Marc is going to be offering helpful tips. Some of the tips are very simple, like lock your doors. He also can talk about what it's like to go through something like that.
If you've seen all the stories just in the last week of kids that are missing and everyone's thinking, "Oh my God! We have a rash of missing kids." Well, no we don't have a rash of missing kids. We have always had this problem. The problem is the media hasn't always centered on it.
Sun: But is the media playing into people's fears and possibly creating hysteria?
JD: It's a fine line. This is where the media can be helpful but also very harmful at the same time. There are about 2,100 cases reported of kids missing every day in America. Now, are all of them legitimate cases? No. Some of them are runaways where the kids are actually found. If you look at the NCIC (National Crime Information Center), the crime computer for the FBI, any day there are 100,000 open missing children cases, and I get this from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Is there an epidemic? I wouldn't call it an epidemic. Is there a crisis? Yes. Has it been under-reported for a long time? By all means it has. Lately, though, they've been paying attention to it, which, I think, is very, very good.
Sun: Where did you get the idea for this show?
JD: It was kind of a confluence of different ideas, one of them being altruistic, one of them being kind of greedy. The altruistic one, I realized that there are so many kids out there that are abandoned or are abducted. And the issue jumped out at me. You're going to say, "Oh, it's because he has kids." I don't have kids. My wife and I have been married 17 years and we don't have kids -- we're both workers. Even though I don't have children, I think I have a responsibility to children who are out there who are in need, just as a citizen of this world. That's the altruistic and socially conscious side.
The other side is that I want to do television shows that I can host. There's still the performer side of me that wants to be the host of a show. I don't want to be a host of a reality show where it's a contest to see if people can eat worms or if people can live with each other in the same house for eight weeks. I'm just not interested in that type of stuff. I want to do something that has some social good.
Sun: You were writing a screenplay on the Ted Binion murder trial. What's the status of the script?
JD: We finished it. My writing partner, Eric Snyder, and I were approached by a local businessman who actually got one of the jurors under contract to give the story. Primarily this businessman wanted the actual story of what happened ...
Sun: During the trial or the events leading up to the murder?
JD: Both. So, we put together a screenplay. We got it to him and primarily it's his job to peddle it.
Sun: As a feature film or a telemovie?
JD: We wrote it as a feature film but it could probably go as a telemovie. I don't have control over it. We were asked to write this and Eric and I wrote it so that we could prove to ourselves that we could write a screenplay. And we've been using it as kind of a resume for ourselves.
I don't know if it hasn't sold because it wasn't written well, although we think it was. Or, maybe it is because the appeal process is coming up and I think there's certainly a lot to appeal. And I think there's a good chance that maybe one of them will get a new trial, especially when it gets out of the Nevada courts.
Sun: Since your days with Channel 13 in 1990, how have you seen Las Vegas media change?
JD: Well, we've certainly gotten more technologically sophisticated. But I think, like the rest of America, we've gotten more corporate-sales oriented in our news. I have a very difficult time when I watch a local newscast and they spend a block -- and it might only be two or three minutes -- of covering a story that leads viewers into a program on their network. That's a little annoying to me.
Granted, they're a business and they've got to make money. But, a lot of times stations use the news departments. So instead of news and information that people need to be warned about or to be educated about, it has become a marketing arm for the station's programming department. I don't like that trend. I don't think it's just happening here, but it does happen here quite a bit. And I don't like that.
Sun: How did covering Las Vegas news differ from other markets in which you've worked?
JD: This town is so different from other towns because, even though we're a growing city ... we're still small town. For instance, we do car accidents. There are a lot of car accident stories, which, in major markets, they wouldn't even touch. So, we still act like a small town as far as our media goes. But then again, that's part of the community. I think they really cater to the community.
Sun: You recently took acting lessons. How much acting went into your delivering the news?
JD: Certainly the difference for me is reading the teleprompter, reading stuff that I've written ahead of time, so, for the most part, I'm trying to be as much me in the newscast. The times that I've had to do some acting, which I have enjoyed, I've had to completely get away from me. The problem is that I've been playing me for so long in front of a TV camera that I had a hard time getting out of me. If there were moments of being uncomfortable as an actor, I would fall back into anchor traits.
When you're acting, you're really becoming somebody else. You've got to put on the clothes and the body of another person and find out what's going on there. And you've got to be able to internalize what that person is going through.
Sun: How are the jobs alike?
JD: The way they're both similar is they're both sales jobs. You've got to sell the audience on what you're bringing to them. When I'm doing a newscast, I've got to sell every story, that this story is important. I've got to sell you on that, not only with the content but how I deliver it to you. It's the same thing with acting. I've got to deliver the character that I'm bringing across to you is somebody worthwhile for you to look at, and that there is some redeeming value for you to pay attention to this character.
There are some similarities. When I was an anchor, was I acting? Yes. There is acting. And if any anchor tells he is not acting, he is lying.
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