WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2001 — In the very first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a young Mary Richards shows up for an interview in the Minneapolis newsroom presided over by Lou Grant. "You’ve got spunk," he tells her, then adds: "I hate spunk."

Ashleigh Banfield’s got spunk.

For reasons that escape me, Banfield, a 33-year-old Canadian, has become an obsession among media critics since her emergence last fall, during MSNBC’s round-the-clock coverage of the Florida election fiasco. (Not that I’m immune; see "Don’t Quote Me," News and Features, March 16). Given that MSNBC has consistently come in dead last among the three ratings-challenged cable news channels, it is at least theoretically possible that there are more people who’ve written about her titanium glasses than there are viewers who have actually seen her.

But now, as they say, is her moment. With news ratings up dramatically since September 11 (although MSNBC continues to trail CNN and the Fox News Channel), Banfield has been dispatched to Islamabad, Pakistan, where she anchors a daily one-hour newscast at 9 p.m. called A Region in Conflict. Clearly her bosses believe that they’re going to turn her into a star. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Carman wrote recently, "As soon as I saw Ashleigh Banfield on the rug with a mullah, I thought, she’s the one."

Now, there’s nothing exactly wrong with Banfield, who went so far as to dye her streaked blond hair a mousy brown before beginning her new assignment, the better not to call attention to herself on the streets of Islamabad. She appears to have an enormous appetite for work; she’s got, well, spunk, having stayed at her post for hours on end on September 11, despite having nearly been killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center; and she seems to be smart and a quick study.

But MSNBC is promoting her for her GenX appeal rather than her experience. And it makes for an odd newscast.

The strangest thing about A Region in Conflict is that there appears to be little reason for Banfield to be anchoring a newscast in Pakistan. Last night (Tuesday, November 6), she spent as much time kicking stories back to Washington and New York as she did doing pieces with a Pakistani or Afghan angle. She even introduced a segment on the New York mayor’s race. And though she briefly interviewed an official from Pakistan’s largest religious party and a local political analyst (Banfield managed to ask her a rather simple question three times before she shut up and let her guest try to hazard an answer), that still doesn’t explain why she’s overseas as an anchor rather than as a correspondent. Think about how silly it would look if CNN put Christiane Amanpour behind an anchor desk and you’ll see what I mean.

Not to take anything away from Banfield’s solid if unspectacular performance, but what this is really all about is building audience share, especially among the youthful viewers whom MSNBC has targeted. This was most evident in a taped interview Banfield did with Father Greg Rice, who runs a drug-treatment facility on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The interview was an excerpt from an hour-long special hosted by Banfield at 10 p.m., A Priest Among the Mullahs, which she introduced by strolling through the marketplace in a sheer black burqa (no burlap sack for her), her appearance smashing, as turbaned men leered at her.

Yes, Ashleigh Banfield’s got spunk. But MSNBC has chosen a weirdly News Lite approach for what it obviously hopes will be its breakthrough program. You’d think the war against terrorism would transcend marketing. Apparently not.