There was just one missing ingredient necessary to transform the story into high TV drama: the subject itself. “Limo Rides Gone Bad” was a piece about 14 Easton High School promgoers who were sadly — but not quite tragically — left cooling their heels when their limo driver was arrested for having a suspended license.

Mildly intriguing? Sure. Offbeat? Yes. But it really didn’t register on the “Holy shit, Martha!” scale.

Back in January, accompanied by dramatic promotional spots featuring gritty street scenes, opened locks, prying flashlights, and intrepid reporters jogging somewhere (apparently after their prey), Channel 5 unveiled the biggest and most prolific investigative unit in a television market that has had a pretty good tradition of sweeps-inspired muckraking.

Staffed by an impressive team that includes four producers and five reporters, “Team 5 Investigates” has cranked out almost 50 pieces in less than four months — a breakneck pace that will yield about 150 stories per year. A few stories — such as a stakeout that found Massport employees snoozing at their posts at Logan Airport — have the look, the feel, and some of the impact of traditional investigative TV journalism. Some stories — such as the news that the Sheraton Ferncroft hotel kitchen was shut down for health violations — clearly fit the definition of breaking news. Many stories — such as Wornick’s story about the poor supervision of limo drivers — fall comfortably into the category of consumer-oriented reporting. And if you listen to the Channel 5 staffers talk about their efforts, you detect a subtle but
palpable change in the definition of investigative reporting.

“Our goal was to uncover information as opposed to just reporting the news,” says the team’s executive producer Jen Berryman.

“I think it’s giving people information they need and information they don’t know,” adds reporter Kelley Tuthill. “I don’t think everything has to be ‘gotcha.’ ”

It’s fair to suggest that those definitions can simply describe the criteria for solid-news reporting rather than for the groundbreaking investigative scoops that often come from exhaustive, painstaking, and high-risk reporting. And among critics, there’s a sense that “Team 5 Investigates” is more of a promotional and marketing concept than a vehicle for potent, homegrown must-see journalism.

One staffer at a rival station characterizes the Channel 5 team’s work as “stories that I think would be general assignment that are labeled ‘investigative.’ ” That sentiment could be considered sour grapes, except that there’s a fair amount of truth to it.

Candid camera
Although it boasts the biggest and busiest team, Channel 5 certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on investigative reporting in Boston television.

CBS4’s three-person team is led by reporters Kathy Curran and high-profile prober Joe Bergantino, who has been on the beat for about 20 years. (The station recently hired the Boston Herald’s Maggie Mulvihill to fill a vacant producer-reporter slot.) The team is best known for dramatic, confrontational pieces that unearth everything from unsavory lawyers to potentially dangerous cults. And it cranks out about two pieces a month — a pace that is usually doubled during crucial “sweeps” ratings periods.

WHDH-TV (Channel 7) features the respected investigative-consumer reporter and 24-year station veteran Hank Phillippi Ryan. She works with two producers to air about 50 investigative pieces per year, including a recent exposé on how chain stores use different pricing structures for different neighborhoods and a hidden-camera investigation of au pairs putting children at risk.

WFXT-TV (Channel 25) has an aggressive four-person team that includes reporter Mike Beaudet and executive producer and former 60 Minutes producer Jon Wells. That undercover unit produces about 12 to 14 stories in each of the three major sweeps months — February, May, and November — and cuts that pace approximately in half for the rest of the year. The station likes splashy targets, including a doctor alleged to be overprescribing Oxycotin and dangerous criminals not being adequately tracked by Massachusetts law enforcement. (Channel 25 is also a defendant in a major lawsuit alleging that the station defamed several members of the Islamic Society of Boston by linking them with terrorism.)

The new Channel 5 unit was based on a successful six-year-old experiment that helped transform WBAL-TV in Baltimore into the news-ratings winner in that
market. The common link there is Channel 5 general manager Bill Fine, who worked as WBAL’s general manger until he came to Boston last year to replace Paul La Camera, who ended up at WBUR-FM.

“It worked very, very well for us in Baltimore,” says Fine. “There’s a good correlation between having a strong investigative unit and being a news leader in your marketplace. It’s not something that takes off in the first few months.... You start getting people to open up to you, [and] we got a number of whistle blowers down in Baltimore.”