In the latest development in news director Sean McLaughlin's de-emphasis of Channel 4's Sports department, the station has dropped sportscasts as a regular segment in 5 p.m. weekday newscasts. That comes just as the Cardinals are headed to the playoffs, the Rams' season is about to begin, college football is under way and the Blues are on the verge of opening training camp.

"It's a time-of-day thing more than anything,'' McLaughlin said. "Audiences at 5 o'clock tend to skew more female. Six is a little more evenly split.

"What we essentially did was take the time sports was getting at 5 (about 75-90 seconds) and added it to the 6 o'clock sportscasts. At 6 we're within an hour of baseball games starting, at 5 o'clock you're in that odd point — not a lot to talk about from today, everything you have to talk about generally is from yesterday."

McLaughlin said there will be some days, when developments warrant, that sports will air at 5 p.m. But those figure to be few and far between.

"It's as-needed,'' he said. "If there's stuff going on we need, we'll put it in. It's just not assumed it will be there every day."

Apparently, the Cards' Albert Pujols hitting two homers and Adam Wainwright winning his big-league-leading 18th game Wednesday afternoon didn't qualify as significant news, because there was no sports report at 5 p.m. that day.

THE SHIP SAILS AWAY

The move continues a series of slashes in sports that follows the dropping of reporter/part-time anchor Todd Schumaker about six months ago. That came not long after producer Troy Roberts was fired and colleague Tim Klutsarits was moved from sports after both had worked in the department for more than a decade. Klutsarits quit a short time after being shifted to news.

"When they brought in (McLaughlin), he was very cool to sports from the get-go,'' Klutsarits said. "The relationship didn't get any better as time went on."

To say KMOV is missing the boat would be a massive understatement — it's more like seeing an ocean liner sail away. In this market sports are an integral element in the community. To wit:

— There are five full-fledged sports-talk radio stations in town and several others that devote significant time to athletics.

— Last month, sports drew nearly 40 percent of all traffic on the Post-Dispatch's website, stltoday.com.

— Fox Sports Midwest has been the highest-rated St. Louis TV station in prime time for all 18 nights it has had a Cards telecast that started before 9 p.m. since the beginning of August.

Instead of sports, viewers of KMOV's 5 p.m. newscasts this week have been presented with a piece on the possible sighting of Big Foot, a story about poor nutritional value in some breakfast cereals (hardly breaking news) and a feature on a guy who has worked at a McDonald's for a long time.

KMOV, once a fierce competitor in sports, now has the smallest department among its primary competitors. A station that once had six staffers now has only 2 1/2, sportscasters Steve Savard and Doug Vaughn as well as producer Brian Barthold — who also works on an entertainment show.

They can't possibly be expected to compete with the five-person staff at KSDK (Channel 5) and the six-member crew at KTVI (Channel 2) . Those stations do numerous sports shows outside of newscasts and the Sports department remains a priority for them.

"For people in this town, sports is ingrained in their lifestyle,'' KSDK sports director Rene Knott said. "They've been into the Cardinals forever, they want to keep up with the Blues, the Rams. You can't necessarily think people are just going to tune in at 6 or 10. They might need to catch you at 5 and be out the door. You want to give them as much as you can.''

KTVI sports director Martin Kilcoyne concurred.

"I'm not in the business of telling someone else how to do TV but I do believe at 5 o'clock, even if it's a heavy female audience, they want to know what's going on with the Cardinals and they may have a passing interest in the Rams,'' he said. "In LA or Miami, you probably could drill sports a lot easier than in St. Louis."

Savard, KMOV's sports director, politely declined to comment on the situation. But he was philosophical in one of McLaughlin's previous cuts to the department.

"I'm not happy at all," he said when addressing the decision last summer not to have live coverage from Rams camp. "But it is what it is and you move on. Whining about it doesn't do any good."

BE 4-WARNED

A major emphasis at Channel 4 is on meteorology, labeling its coverage as "4 Warn'' weathercasts. It's a nonsensical moniker on most days when the title is nothing more than a comical boy-cries-wolf tag because there is nothing to be warned about: "Warning! The forecast tonight calls for clear skies and the temperature in the 70s!''

The real slogan should be "4 Lorn" sports: "Warning! If you're a sports fan, go elsewhere because we have lagging coverage!''

Webster's definition of forlorn — "abandoned or deserted'' — fits to a "T'' here.