BY TERRY JACKSON

 The two items most in demand in Miami this week: a ticket to tonight's Nightline
 town hall meeting and a freelance TV news crew not already booked to stake out
 Elian Gonzalez's Little Havana home.

 With the arrival of Juan Miguel Gonzalez in Washington, the media frenzy in
 Miami has been ratcheted up yet another notch in anticipation that the four-month
 international drama might be reaching a crescendo.

 The latest to bring their spotlight to Miami is ABC's Nightline, which comes to
 Florida International University tonight for a 90-minute live show that host Ted
 Koppel said is intended to ``take the pulse of Miami.''

 Eager for a spot in FIU's 600-seat Wertheim Performing Arts Center, hundreds of
 people have called FIU and ABC seeking tickets.

 ``Our phones have been ringing off the hook,'' Aileen Izquierdo, an FIU
 spokeswoman, said Thursday.

 The answer? Sorry, it's invitation only.

 ``Whenever we do a town meeting on the road, we get a lot of response,'' said
 Sara Just, Nightline's chief booker. ``I think that because this issue is happening
 right now, the response is greater than we would normally get.

 ``What we want to do is make sure the audience is a fair, representative
 cross-section of South Florida.''

 Just and her crew have been calling community groups, politicians, activists and
 ordinary citizens the past two days to offer seats for the 11:35 p.m. WPLG-ABC
 10 broadcast, which also will be available in Spanish on Radio Mambi, WAQI-AM
 (710).

 ``Some of the people who believe that the boy should be with his father have been
 concerned about making those views public,'' Just said.

 Nonetheless, she thinks all sides in the Elian controversy will be represented.

 ``There are certainly many views within the Cuban-American community, and
 we're finding that some of the people we're calling are changing their impressions
 every day,'' Just said.

 What's also changing every day is the media throng across from the Northwest
 Second Street home where Elian has been living for the past four months. It's now
 growing larger as out-of-town news crews set up an around-the-clock stakeout.

 ``We're now calling it Camp Elian,'' CNN's Susan Candiotti said Thursday, waving
 down the block at a string of side-by-side canopies, each a shaded oasis for a
 different station or network.

 ``I've been covering this since December and the scene here had fallen into sort of
 a lull until last week, when word that Elian's father might come to the U.S. got
 everyone all excited.''

 Now miles of multicolored cables snake down the street and around the block to
 huge satellite trucks, making a walk through Camp Elian a treacherous affair.

 Coolers filled with water, juice and soft drinks keep reporters' throats lubricated for
 their updates -- which in the case of Candiotti can come as often as every
 half-hour, regardless of whether there's anything new to report. Recently, a gray
 tabby cat has taken to prowling Camp Elian, adding a lived-in touch.

 With the arrival of more out-of-towners, parking within two or three blocks of
 Elian's has become impossible, both for residents and news crews.

 Robert Viscon, news director at South Florida station WSCV-Telemundo 51, said
 that he can't move his news truck -- one of only two owned by the station -- if
 news breaks elsewhere.

 ``Since all the media from the rest of the country moved in, if we had moved we
 would have lost our space,'' he said.

 ``I've never seen this kind of coverage of a Cuban event before.''

 By Thursday night, Camp Elian had pretty much hit capacity and is unlikely to
 grow because nearly every freelance camera crew within 200 miles of Miami has
 been booked for Elian coverage.

 ``I don't think you could get a crew if you needed one,'' said Alice Jacobs,
 WSVN-Fox 7's vice president for news. ``Freelancers are getting rich off this.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald