TV Talk: Local TV news goes under the microscope in comedic HBO docu-series

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

A local TV newsroom has been the setting for plenty of past series, whether fiction or non-fiction, but the six-episode “Small Town News: KPVM Pahrump” (9 and 9:30 p.m. Aug. 2, HBO and HBO Max) exists in a place somewhere in between.

This half-hour, comedic docu-series — a jaunty music soundtrack sets the tone — leans into the absurdities of a rinky-dink, independent TV station that produces a single half-hour newscast in the Nevada desert, 62 miles west of Las Vegas.

Goofily dim owner Vern put KPVM on the air in the late ’90s. The station, staffed by an assortment of oddball characters, airs reruns and some public access-grade local programming. But the focus here is largely on the news team, particularly news director/anchor/reporter/camera operator/dishwasher Deanna O’Donnell, the show’s lead protagonist. Hard-working and sometimes hard-charging, good-humored O’Donnell is a dogged news gatherer whose 24/7 devotion to KPVM is both admirable and arguably unhealthy (“I’m the only person who stays here because I have no self-esteem,” O’Donnell says in a revealing moment after yet another staffer quits KPVM.)

She’s joined at the anchor desk some nights by Eunette Gentry, who works several jobs and sometimes speeds to the station, arriving only a few minutes before the newscast begins. Eunette explains she has “resting smile face;” she’s rarely shown in “Small Town News” without a smile.

Executive produced by World of Wonder’s Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (“RuPaul’s Drag Race,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), “Small Town News” proves the old adage, “truth is stranger than fiction.” If you made a fictional show featuring a skirt-clad, TV station tower climber or a jocular-to-the-max weatherman, it would be deemed over the top and unbelievable. (I’m sure I’ve written such reviews.)

There are moments where “Small Town News” seems to be looking down its nose at these people and those they cover, like they’re rubes whose lack of sophistication is being recorded for our amusement. At other times, judicious editing results in questionable comedy: A cop can’t bust down a door on a training course but O’Donnell is shown successfully kicking in the door. What got left out in between?

There are also a few frustratingly unanswered questions: An editor is shown having a meltdown in episode one. He’s replaced by someone new in episode two but viewers never learn what the first guy was upset about.

Filming for “Small Town News” began in January 2020 just before Vern began to push into the Las Vegas market with an improved station signal. Presumably the series intended to follow efforts to compete with major-market TV stations until covid got in the way. Instead Vern winds up fighting to keep KPVM alive, recording promos that offer TV ads for $5 a pop (one KPVM ad asks, “When was the last time you had a mouthful of Big Dick’s Pizza?”).

The show’s warts-and-all entertainment value wears out its welcome as the last few episodes focus on the 2020 election and its aftermath with Trump-loving Vern, who self-identifies as “the only Republican broadcaster in Nevada,” spinning stolen election conspiracy theories. Vern gleefully covers Trump rallies for KPVM, saying the coverage helps drive the station’s news viewership but it sure doesn’t help with access: Viewers see Vern get blown off by the Trump campaign, losing an opportunity to interview Donald Trump Jr. after a rally. O’Donnell attempts to find balance but only one Nye County, Nev., Democratic group of wine-drinking women is willing to go on camera.

“Small Town News” does have some heart as Vern chokes up discussing his questionably advisable dream to expand the station’s coverage to Vegas. But by the end the series feels both overly long and unsatisfying, wrapping up without a conclusion for whether Vern’s big Vegas bet pays off.