'Politically Incorrect' to try prime time

The ABC network will air an hour of "Politically Incorrect with
Bill Maher" in prime time beginning July 10. The first half-hour
will air live from Los Angeles, the second half-hour and the regular
late-night edition of "PI" will be different repeats of earlier
shows.
By airing the hourlong program in the 9 p.m. Thursday time slot,
ABC's Jamie Tarses, who has faced relentless criticism for her
programming choices as entertainment president, may have scored a
master stroke. ABC will be countering summer repeats of the season's
highest-rated program, "ER" on NBC, with fresh tapings of the
best-received late-night show in years.
The hour of "PI" will air Thursdays through July 31. For the
last show, executive producer Scott Carter is promising "a panel of
four that will be a very intriguing group of people," including a
guest Maher has been trying to book on the show for a year.
Carter said Maher was "very happy" to have a chance at prime
time and compared the three-shows-a-night air schedule to that of
"PI" when it aired on Comedy Central from 1993 to 1996.
"It's like cable days all over again, where they taped a show
and then repeated it 15 times," he said.
"PI" will also oppose "48 Hours" on CBS, which is also
pulling a summer stunt by airing a second show on Wednesday nights
beginning July 30.
Since its January debut in the post-"Nightline" slot, "PI"
has settled in as a solid runner-up to "The Tonight Show with Jay
Leno," averaging more than 3 million viewers per night. The show
performs even better in markets - unlike Kansas City - in which it is
aired "live" at 11:05 p.m.
The three-week run "is a way to introduce both his unique brand
of humor and the series' topical edge to a much broader audience,"
said Tarses, ABC's entertainment president.
"48 Hours" producer Susan Zirinsky, who had faced ABC's
"Turning Point" in the time slot, said ABC's move gave viewers a
clearer choice of shows. "It's a very clever, very well-done show,"
she said. "So welcome to the neighborhood, and don't forget your
asbestos underwear."
Some information for this article is from The New York Daily
News.

Women, minorities make uneven progress in broadcast management

The promotion of Charlotte Moore English out of her position as
general manager of KSHB, Channel 41, by the station's parent, E.W.
Scripps Co., at first sparked concerns from some of her colleagues in
the media.
The reason? In an industry where white males continue to hold the
vast majority of leadership roles, English was a rarity: a seasoned
African-American female general manager of a major-market TV station.
But recent hiring trends suggest that more women will be
occupying executive suites throughout the TV industry, as the
"pipeline" of secondary positions becomes more diverse and the
current holders of power realize that it only makes good sense to
promote people who reflect the diversity of TV's audience.
"In the last year or so there have been a spate of women being
named general managers," said Charles Warner of the University of
Missouri Journalism School. "We've had them in New York, in Dallas,
Los Angeles. In Chicago there are three now. It's unbelievable what's
going on."
General managers come from either the sales side or the news
side. And those secondary jobs - sales manager and news director -
are starting to go to women in unprecedented numbers.
Vernon Stone, professor emeritus at the Missouri Journalism
School, has been studying diversity in the newsroom since 1972.
During that time the percentage of women in news director's jobs has
gone from zero to nearly 25 percent.
Those numbers are neatly borne out in Kansas City, where one in
four news directors - namely, Lynn Heider at Channel 41 - is female.
The trend is even greater in sales, locally and nationally.
Minorities are another story. There have been some recent
high-profile promotions in other cities: Lyle Banks, an
African-American, in Chicago and Janet Mason, an Asian-American, in
Grand Rapids, Mich. And Spanish-language stations have given
Hispanics new ladders to climb. But diversity in both sales and news
managers' jobs is still "pitifully small," as Warner says.
Unpopular as the notion has become, Stone said he still thinks
affirmative action is a good idea.
"Minorities went so long without a level playing field that they
have not caught up in the mass media," said Stone. "Your work force
needs to reflect your audience and most major markets certainly have
diverse populations. You need them on the air and - very important -
you need them off-camera" - in management jobs, that is.
Sharon Stevens, vice president for broadcasting of the National
Association of Black Journalists, said she and her peers also need to
shoulder the responsibility for increasing minority presence.
"I'm probably as guilty as anyone else," said Stevens, who is
the education reporter for a St. Louis TV station. "More of us have
to get interested in management."
In local news
Viewers who are deaf or hearing impaired will get a better read
on the news starting Monday Channel 5 introduces real-time closed
captioning to the area.
During its 10 p.m. newscast, a trained court reporter in Orlando,
Fla., will transcribe every word spoken and convey it via modem to
Channel 5.
All four area newscasts currently supply closed captioning by
scrolling the same scripts their anchors read onto the screen. With
real-time, Channel 5 said that segments like the weather and breaking
news that had previously gone uncaptioned will be fully transcribed.
The captioning, from Caption Services of Kansas, will also be
available during emergency situations.
"3rd Rock From the Sun" repeats aren't coming to the Kansas
City market until the fall of 1999, but Channel 4 has already got the
rights. The Fox network just won the bidding for "3rd Rock" for its
station group, which includes WDAF. At least you won't have to wait
much longer for "Frasier" repeats; those begin airing this fall on
Channel 62. The broadcast debut of "Pulp Fiction" will also be on
62 this fall.
Talk back to your TV!
E-mail barnhart@kcstar.com.

A 'variety' of oversights List of top 100 shows could have really socked it to 'em with offbeat programs

Cheers to TV Guide for attempting yet another ambitious theme
issue with this week's "The 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time."
Jeers to TV Guide for producing a list filled with clinkers -
the wrong episodes from the right series, or from series to which the
word "great" had hitherto never been attached.
The list, compiled by the magazine's editors and programmers
from Nick at Nite's TV Land channel, includes worthy entries like the
Chuckles episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," a
much-talked-about "ER," the "Password" episode of "The Odd
Couple" and the Leo Durocher appearance on "Mr. Ed."
Theme issues like this help keep the magazine's name in play -
even if readers use TV Guide's name in vain - and in this case, Nick
at Nite gets a piece of the action, too. Next week the cable network
is showing 25 of the 100 chosen episodes, since it so happens they
already own the rights to them.
But the piffle quotient on this list is alarmingly high.
Why, of the two "Seinfelds" chosen, does neither one involve
Jerry and his pals trying to master their "domain"?
Why does neither "I Love Lucy" episode take place on a factory
assembly line?
And why were any choices wasted on series like "The Mod Squad,"
"Partridge Family," "Love Boat" and "The Brady Bunch"? Sure,
these shows are currently enjoying a revival on Nick at Nite and
other channels, but that has little to do with their "greatness"
and more with our collective amazement that we once spent so much
time watching them.
Then there's the matter of all the shows categorically excluded
by the TV Guide list.
An "episode," according to the editors, is a "storytelling
unit of series television."
So that excludes talk shows, daytime or late night (don't be
fooled by "The Larry Sanders Show" at No. 39, a sitcom in a talk
show suit).
Ditto for game shows.
Daytime dramas are left off the list as well, even though they
have writers, cast regulars and guest stars and are series, albeit
daily series. Nick at Nite apparently hasn't acquired the rights to
any old "Guiding Lights" yet.
And, more appalling, prime-time variety shows didn't make the
cut, either.
From "The Ed Sullivan Show" to David Letterman's anniversary
broadcasts, variety shows have had their occasional special nights
when the music, the comedy and the ad libs melded into a seamless
little hour of televised magic.
What all of these excluded programs have in common, what they
have in common with many of the series on TV Guide's list, is that
from time to time, they went from good to better - or as they say on
the Internet, from LOL (laugh out loud) to ROTFL (rolling on the
floor laughing).
Who, for instance, can forget:
The Madonna-Sandra Bernhard episode of "Late Night With David
Letterman" (1988). During a long writers' strike , Letterman went
stir-crazy watching month after month of reruns. Finally in July he
went back on the air, sans writers, and filled time telling stories,
letting director Hal Gurnee put on absurd "network time killers"
and booking outrageous guests. The shows were the stuff of legend,
never before or since repeated, and were capped one silly evening
when Bernhard and her new best friend, Madonna, waltzed onto the set
in matching outfits and messed with Dave's mind for 40 minutes.
The Dick Nixon appearance on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In"
(1968). How this side-splitting variety show - and the most popular
program of the 1968 and 1969 seasons - got left off TV Guide's list
is a baffler. It was the most creative, tuned-in program of its time,
unlike the ultra-square "Partridge Family. " It launched the careers
of Arte Johnson, Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin. And it gave rise to
catch phrases like "You bet your bippy" and the one Nixon
immortalized: "Sock it to me!"
The penultimate "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" (1992).
Was it really five years ago that Bette Midler and Robin Williams
helped America say goodbye to Johnny? Has it been 33 years since that
fateful tomahawk toss by Ed Ames became the first of hundreds of
memorable moments preserved and revisited over the years? Yes, but
there were nights when you wish the entire program could run as an
anniversary-show highlight. This was one of them.
"Marty" on "Philco/Goodyear Playhouse" (1953). There actually
is one live drama from the "golden era" of TV in the TV Guide list,
a "Playhouse 90" production from 1956 (Jack Palance as a
beaten-down boxer in "Mount"). But Rod Steiger's portrayal of the
lonely butcher in Paddy Chayefsky's teleplay touched a national nerve
and led to the Oscar-winning movie with Ernest Borgnine. "Days of
Wine and Roses," written by a former air-conditioning salesman named
J.P. Miller, was similarly influential.
The first episode of "Fernwood 2-Night" (1977). It was the talk
of the summer: Martin Mull as Barth Gimble, the affable host of local
station WZAZ's talk show, in this "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"
spinoff. It got off to an appropriately incorrect start: a pianist
performed in an iron lung and a Jewish accountant passing through
town was dragged into the studio so that viewers in this homogeneous
suburb could "talk to a Jew. " Smarmy sidekick Jerry (played by Fred
Willard) and most unhappy bandleader Happy Kyne (Frank DeVol) rounded
out Gimble's bizarre trio. Sleepy, backward Fernwood was ahead of its
time.
The Richard Pryor episode of "Saturday Night Live" (1975). NBC,
terrified that Pryor would expectorate bad words on the air, put this
ostensibly live show on a seven-second delay. But there was no censor
to stop the outrageous "word association" sketch with Chevy Chase
that put this unsung new show on the map.
The Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (1964). Elvis on "The Ed
Sullivan Show" (1956). Heck, Julius LaRosa on "The Ed Sullivan
Show" (1953)! A quarter-century of the greatest running
entertainment program in American TV history, and no place for a
single broadcast on TV Guide's list?
Good job, TV Guide, but not great.

News awards handed out

Two of the three local news competitions handed out their awards
earlier this month, and area TV stations walked away with major
hardware.
In statewide competition, KSHB, Channel 41, took top honors from
the Missouri Broadcast Association in investigative reporting, for a
story on the security measures taken at area children's fun centers;
and in news series, for a report on illegal trash dumping.
KMBC, Channel 9, took top honors for overall newscast, and KCTV,
Channel 5, was honored for Wendall Anschutz's commentaries. Spot news
award went to Springfield's KOLR.
In Kansas City Press Club awards, KMBC won in four categories:
best newscast, documentary (for its coverage of the Muehlebach Hotel
implosion), feature reporting and public service.
WDAF, Channel 4, won in spot news for its coverage of last
August's microburst on the Plaza and in general reporting and
photojournalism.
KSHB took first, second and third in investigative news.

KSHB is losing general manager; Charlotte English taking job at station's parent, E.W. Scripps.

After 4 1/2 years at the helm of KSHB, Channel 41, Charlotte
Moore English is leaving to assume a new position at KSHB's parent,
E.W. Scripps Co.
English will become the Cincinnati-based company's vice president
of programming development. She will supervise the creation of new
local programs at the nine stations owned by Scripps.
English is succeeded as general manager by James D. Swinehart,
who became KSHB's station manager in 1995. The changes were announced
at Channel 41's Oak Street headquarters on Wednesday by Scripps'
senior broadcast vice president, James M. Hart.
"We appreciate the contribution Charlotte has made in helping
convert Channel 41 from an independent Fox affiliate to an NBC
station with a full-service news department," Hart said.
Under Moore's guidance, Channel 41 launched a full-fledged news
operation and weathered the loss of its Fox affiliation when the New
World Communications group that includes WDAF, Channel 4, was sold to
Fox.
KSHB's investigative news team has begun to draw notices from its
peers and recently won top honors in two different regional
competitions.
Still, as Swinehart said Wednesday, promotion remains a challenge
at the fourth-ranked station, where NBC's national dominance has yet
to rub off.
"We basically have a three-year track record with news,"
Swinehart said. "People are not going to recognize us for doing for
three years what everybody else has done for 25 years."
At Scripps, English will work with the group's general managers,
including Swinehart, to create locally produced magazines,
entertainment shows and other niche programming to win viewers back
from cable. Such shows are already on the air at other Scripps-owned
stations and are in the works at KSHB.
It was not certain whether English, whose husband, Claude, is
head basketball coach and athletic director at Park College, would be
moving to Cincinnati, although sources at Scripps indicated Wednesday
that this would not be necessary, given the amount of travel
involved, and the fact that other Scripps executives live outside of
the Cincinnati area.

TV ratings headed for rewrite to give parents more guidance; Compromise adds labels to age-based voluntary system.

Five months after TV stations and cable channels introduced a
ratings system to help parents identify appropriate programs for
their families, the system is on the verge of an overhaul.
After weeks of negotiations, representatives for the networks and
parents' groups were reportedly close Tuesday to a compromise that
will add the labels "S" (for sexual content), "V" (for violence)
and "L" (for adult language) to such existing age-based ratings as
"TV-G" and "TV-14. " Labels for suggestive dialogue or different
types of violence could also be added.
In addition, the ratings would appear more frequently and for
longer periods during a program.
A compromise would allow the voluntary ratings system, which
began Jan. 1, to continue. Otherwise, the networks risk having a
content-based system imposed on them by Congress, an effort led by
Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who oversees the Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
The ratings system is crucial to the future success of the
V-chip, which is to be included in all television sets manufactured
beginning in 1998. Parents with V-chips will be able to block
programs they don't want their families to watch, and presumably the
industry's ratings system will be the most widely used standard for
blocking programs.
Surveys conducted in the months after the TV ratings system was
introduced showed that a majority of parents with young children -
the primary group for which the ratings were designed - weren't using
the system, citing the seemingly arbitrary nature of the ratings
assigned to shows.
Interviews with Kansas City area families on Tuesday confirmed
that the TV ratings weren't being used much, but the reasons are
complex and may not be fully addressed by the proposed improvements.
Laura Barnds of Mission Hills, the mother of three young
children, said her and her husband's schedules didn't often allow
them the luxury of leisurely TV viewing. As a result, they're usually
tuning into a show in mid-program - after the TV rating already has
appeared on screen.
"I'm not even sure what the ratings are," Barnds conceded. "I
think it's a good idea, but we just have not used them."
Barnds gets her information about shows the old-fashioned way.
She tunes in for a few lines of dialogue and then decides if the
program is suitable for her children's ears.
"If (the rating) were on the screen a little longer, and the
ratings were published in The Star's television section, then I think
people would use them," Barnds said.
Patricia Hill of Kansas City, Kan., also uses the preview test
when her four great-nieces and nephews, ages 4 through 9, come to
visit.
"I just turn it off if I don't like what I see," said Hill, who
also has three young adults living with her. "We still have to do
that even with the ratings."
Hill said the networks should use content ratings, like the ones
that cable movie channels HBO and Showtime adopted in 1994. Those
ratings not only indicate a program contains adult content but note
degrees of violence, sexual content and adult content in each
program.
"They put up 'TV-14' and you don't know what they're talking
about! " said Hill. "You have to look at the show to figure out what
it means."
Even parents who use the ratings don't put a lot of stock in
them.
"It gives me a very rough rule of thumb," said Mary O'Connor of
Kansas City, who has four young children. But, she added, "If you
just walk in in the middle of the show you don't know what (the
rating) is. And it's still a matter of somebody's opinion as to what
(the guidelines) are."
O'Connor compared the TV ratings system with the current movie
ratings system, which many parents use in conjunction with
word-of-mouth or newspaper reviews that give the reasons behind the
ratings - information that would come with content labels such as
"S," "V" and "L."
O'Connor is ready for the V-chip era, too; her family recently
moved into an upgraded American Cablevision area and uses its new AXS
terminal to restrict what the children watch.
"We blocked two-thirds of the channels," O'Connor said. "A lot
of what we block is brain candy that's just unnecessary for them.
We'd rather have them outside or doing something more productive."
TV ratings would appear to be of little use to parents such as Jo
Ann Stanley of Westwood Hills who stick with videos and programs of
which they approve.
"My kids are allowed an hour a day and they usually just watch
something on PBS, like 'Wishbone,' " said Stanley, mother of two
girls 7 and 9. "I have to admit to relying a lot on PBS because
generally I like their programming and I hate commercials."
PBS, which believes its programming is not the source of parents'
travails, has thus far declined to participate in the TV ratings
system.
The current age-based rating system is considered "evaluative."
A "TV-14" rating, for instance, tells parents to supervise children
14 and younger who want to watch the show.
What parents' groups and key senators have been pushing for,
instead, is a "descriptive" system that issues labels for certain
generic types of adult content - such as the proposed "S-V-L"
system - and lets parents decide what types of adult content, if any,
are suitable for their children.
The compromise system will be both evaluative and descriptive.
The already-familiar box that appears in the top left corner of the
TV screen would include an age-based rating as well as any applicable
content ratings (for example, "TV-14 V-L"). And the rating will
appear more often and remain on-screen longer.
Since the current system began at the beginning of the year, the
networks have tinkered with their ratings criteria. In particular,
several shows originally rated "TV-PG" began to earn "TV-14"
ratings after complaints from the public. Those included "Friends"
(for sexual innuendo) and "Walker: Texas Ranger" (for violence).
But parents' groups, including the Center for Media Education and
the national PTA, continued to criticize the system. Finally, Jack
Valenti, the film industry's chief lobbyist and point man for the TV
ratings system, suggested a town meeting be held in Peoria, Ill., the
storied epitome of heartland values, with 300 randomly selected
families supplying feedback to the industry on the ratings system.
The response from that hearing, held late last month, was
overwhelmingly negative. One mother of three said the "TV-14"
presumed that "all 14-year-olds are on the same wavelength, and they
are not. " Another mother protested the liberal ratings given to
shows with adult content, such as "NYPD Blue," which she felt
should be rated "TV-MA" (for mature audiences).
Opinion polls continued to show preference for content-based
ratings over age-based ratings. Sen. Dan Coats, Republican of
Indiana, introduced a bill, co-sponsored by Sen. John Ashcroft,
Republican of Missouri, mandating a content-based system. Last week
Vice President Al Gore publicly endorsed a content-based system, and
McCain said he would bring the bill out of committee this week unless
a compromise between networks and parents' groups was reached.

More local homes to get FSR games. Jones Intercable adds network, its exclusive broadcasts of Royals.

The sports picture for 85,000 Jones Intercable subscribers just
improved dramatically.
Fox Sports Rocky Mountain and Jones Intercable signed an
agreement Friday that will bring the regional cable network - and the
Royals games for which it holds exclusive rights - to Olathe,
Independence, Lee's Summit and the other communities Jones serves in
the eastern Kansas City area.
On Monday, the network will sign on - on Channel 73 in Olathe and
on Channel 37 everywhere else in the Jones system - in time for that
evening's Royals game.
A Jones spokesman said Friday that some Missouri zones might
experience grainy pictures at first but that will improve as soon as
the company brings new fiber lines into those areas as part of a
systemwide upgrade.
That leaves American Cablevision's 200,000 customers as the only
ones in the market without access to Fox Sports Rocky Mountain's
Royals games. The network has the exclusive rights to 16 more Royals
games this season and 30 games overall.
TCI of Overland Park, which has 93,000 subscribers, and Westec
Cablevision in northwest Johnson County, which has 2,000 homes,
already carry Fox Sports Rocky Mountain.
Royals and Fox Sports officials expressed optimism Friday that
the Jones deal finally will persuade American Cablevision to come
back to the bargaining table where negotiations with Fox have
stalled.
"People will realize it's not the Royals that are doing this -
these are decisions made by individual companies," said Mike Levy,
the Royals' marketing vice president. "I hope to heck American
Cablevision comes on because they'd be tremendous partners. That's
just the shame of this."
Gretchen Bunn, assistant general manager for Fox Sports Rocky
Mountain, said, "We didn't give anything more to Jones than we've
(offered) to Time Warner."
Bob Niles, American Cablevision's president, was not so upbeat.
"We've done quite a bit of research on this issue and feel we're
doing what's best for our customers as a whole," said Niles, who
reiterated his belief that Fox should have allowed Metro Sports -
American Cablevision's locally produced sports network - to carry the
30 Royals games.
"If we were in error in measuring our customers' desire for the
product, or the offer from Fox has changed, we'd be willing to listen
to that."
Jones officials previously had offered to air Fox Sports as
either a minipay service or on a part-time basis on a channel it
would share with another network. But Fox was adamant that the
station be available to all viewers, 24 hours a day.
Fox's strategy was borne out Friday by a report that it is about
to acquire SportsChannel, another regional sports network owned by
Cablevision Systems Corp. The resulting regional/national sports
network will feature 40 professional teams, numerous collegiate
conferences and "Fox Sports News," a competitor to ESPN's
"SportsCenter," and will reach 60 million viewers, according to the
New York Times.
Without the widest possible exposure, Fox Sports Net officials
said, it cannot compete head to head with ESPN, which is why the
Metro Sports offer was rejected.
Some have worried that TCI's deal to carry Fox Sports will be
jeopardized by the impending merger of the TCI of Overland Park
franchise with American Cablevision's franchise, which was reported
Tuesday in The Kansas City Star.
A highly public feud has been ongoing between Fox chairman Rupert
Murdoch and Ted Turner, vice chairman of American Cablevision's
parent company, Time Warner. This week, Turner challenged - only
half-jokingly - Murdoch to a boxing match.
But regardless of how the two media moguls feel personally about
each other, their companies are doing business in numerous cable
systems across the country and are completing deals in Los Angeles,
Indianapolis and the Lincoln-Omaha, Neb., area.

Anchorman's daughter wins role in syndicated children's show

As any parent will tell you, children's television is a world
unto itself. For Jennifer Moore, it also happens to be a land of
opportunity.
Moore, the daughter of Channel 9 anchorman Larry Moore, has
landed her first big TV role on "Barnyard Place," an educational
children's program being syndicated by Silver Vision Entertainment
across the country, including KMCI, Channel 38. It begins airing this
fall.
"Barnyard Place" is faithful to the format perfected long ago
by the Children's Television Workshop ("Sesame Street" and more
recently "Big Bag"). Adults, children and Muppet-like creatures all
share the same neighborhood - a world unto their own - where they
sing songs and learn lessons about respecting yourself and others.
Moore's character is called Daisy, and she looks like one, too:
her outfit consists of a green spandex body suit and a ring of giant
petals around her face.
In a phone interview from Los Angeles, Moore - last seen here in
the Martin City Melodrama & Vaudeville Co.'s "The Wolfman, Or
Another Bad Hair Day" - answered the obvious question: Was it
inevitable that the daughter of a TV personality would end up in
front of the camera?
"Ever since I was real little I've been around cameras. You
know, doing commercials with my dad," said Moore. "But they were by
no means taking me to a talent scout."
When the Moores lived in Chicago, however, Jennifer learned Irish
folk dancing and started a dance troupe some Kansas Citians may
remember. That led to acting classes and, after graduating from
college in 1993, the itch to perform full time.
She moved to California 2 1/2 years ago and found work in a
children's theater company and as an extra. "I don't want this to go
down in history, but I was a regular extra on 'Power Rangers,' " she
said.
Thirteen episodes, or half a season, of "Barnyard Place" are
already in the can, and Moore begins taping another 13 in July.
Meanwhile she's been "auditioning like crazy" for parts in the
fall.
But for now, being Daisy is OK by her.
"It's so nice to have a show and be able to call up Mom and Dad
and say, 'I've got a show - and everyone can watch it! ' " Moore
said.
Viewer mail
Last week I asked for your views on a new proposal to allow
full-blown commercials on PBS stations. Among the great responses
left on StarTouch:
Anne Crossley: "I support Channel 19 with funds every year, and
if they had advertisements I would definitely quit supporting it."
Robert Potty, Overland Park: "I would be leaning toward
commercials only at the top of the hour or before a program."
From anonymous callers: "They won't get any more financial
support from me if they do that."
" A disastrous idea, and moreover I disagree with what you
say in the column. Those 30-second (donor announcements) certainly
are commercials. For all the money our government spends in
worthless endeavors, they should support public television."
"If they really need commercials, they shouldn't have just any
old (commercials) like Burger King, but (for) educational materials,
software, things like that."
And this from Janice Page: "The idea that public TV is
noncommercial is a myth, just like the myth that 'Sesame Street' is
educational. It's educational all right - it teaches little kids to
be hooked on TV at a very early age."
E-mail: barnhart@kcstar.com

TCI, American cable deal reported

For the second time in three years, Johnson County television
viewers are about to get a new cable company.
In a deal to be announced soon, TCI of Overland Park will merge
with the American Cablevision franchise that currently serves the two
Kansas Citys, Leavenworth and some 40 other communities, industry
sources told The Kansas City Star.
American Cablevision is owned by both TCI and Time Warner, the
No. 1 and No. 2 cable operators in the country, and managed by Time
Warner. The resulting 300,000-subscriber operation will be owned
jointly by the two companies and managed by Time Warner. It was
uncertain whether all operations would be consolidated at American
Cablevision's headquarters in southeast Kansas City.
The transaction means that TCI's 93,000 Johnson County
subscribers, who were to be upgraded to TCI's All TV digital service
later this year, probably will be upgraded to American Cablevision's
new AXS system instead. AXS is an all-fiber network that adds new
channels to American Cablevision sets, but not nearly as many as All
TV would have.
The two Kansas Citys will not be fully upgraded to AXS until
year's end, and former TCI subscribers may have to wait longer for
their upgrade.
Officials for Time Warner and TCI would not comment, but multiple
sources confirmed that a deal - which has been on the drawing board
practically from the moment TCI bought the TeleCable franchise in
late 1994 - was imminent.
The transaction is expected to aid TCI's restructuring under new
President Leo J. Hindery Jr. and relieve some of the Englewood,
Colo., company's multibillion-dollar debt.
Last week TCI sold cable systems with a total of 820,000
subscribers in suburban New York to Cablevision Systems Corp., no
relation to American Cablevision, in exchange for stock and nearly
$ 700 million in debt relief.
TCI's ownership stake in the Overland Park franchise would
decrease from 100 percent to 50 percent. And it would spare the
company from having to bring its expensive All TV upgrade to the
Kansas City area. (TCI's Topeka subscribers will be offered the
optional service in July.)
The consolidation also will pave the way for Johnson County
subscribers to receive CNN/SI, the Time Warner sports news network
that currently runs on American Cablevision's Channel 30 when
locally-produced Metro Sports is not on the air.
A network link is already in place so that Metro Sports, which
originates at American Cablevision, can be shared with TCI customers.
Reciprocally, TCI's community channel 15 could be offered to homes
currently served by American Cablevision, creating an area-wide
community TV network - something Kansas City hasn't had since Channel
30 was turned over to Metro Sports.
(CORRECTION: Because of a reporter's error, an article Tuesday on an impending merger of TCI's and Time Warner's Kansas City area cable franchises said that the CNN/SI channel is not available on TCI systems in Johnson County. CNN/SI was added June 1 as channel 20B, which it shares with Metro Sports.)

Weathering heights: The slow-developing success of the Weather Channel has made conditions favorable for storm lovers and local forecasters

When The Weather Channel signed on 15 years ago, it scarcely made
a blip on the radar. Fewer than 10 percent of the 30 million homes
with cable in 1982 could even view it, and few gave the venture much
of a chance for success.
"It's questionable that many folks care enough to tune in a
national TV channel when the local forecast is so easy to get on
telephone or radio," one TV critic, Gary Deeb, wrote in 1983.
The Weather Channel instantly became the stuff of parody. The
only thing more trivial than the channel itself, it seemed, was the
time people spent watching it. David Letterman, the late night TV
host and one-time weatherman in Indianapolis, mocked the idea of
being able to know "the relative humidity in Manila."
But look who's laughing now. After losing millions of dollars in
its early years, The Weather Channel is now the 14th largest cable
network in the United States, reaching nearly 68 million homes (the
No. 1 network, ESPN, reaches about 72 million). It recently launched
a Spanish-language service, and has become a potent brand name on
radio and the Internet as well.
Its average viewership of 285,000 homes - very respectable by
cable standards and way up from 130,000 homes just a couple of years
ago - can soar during periods of intense weather activity.
So can the voices of its on-air meteorologists, who make not the
slightest effort to conceal their enthusiasm for severe storms and
whatever else Mother Nature stirs up.
"We've gone from 10 to 15 degrees below normal in New England to
10 to 15 degrees above normal! " exclaimed Cheryl Lemke last week
while viewers looked at video of passers-by roasting in the Boston
heat.
Only here would you find a feature called "Weather Rewind," a
meteorological highlight reel of the last week. The Weather Channel's
commercials look like something a local TV newscast would use to
promote itself - action scenes of the network's on-screen talent
brushing past each other in the studio, scrambling for a better look
at the radar. If weather hits, the ads seem to say, our crack
meteorologists will be there to call the blow-by-blow.
And we'll be watching. In a decade dominated by reality TV and
quantum leaps in technology, weather has become a major form of
infotainment. Best of all, it actually affects your life!
"People here get all excited about different things," said Mark
Mancuso, who has been with The Weather Channel its entire 15-year
run. "Some here get excited about severe storms, some get excited
about hurricanes People are people and they like to watch
things going on in real life."
Or as his morning co-anchor and 10-year Weather Channel veteran
Vivian Brown puts it, "We just have an understanding that the
weather is the star here."
Drizzling start
The Weather Channel was the brainchild of a TV forecaster who was
a star in his own right. John Coleman's booming voice and colorful
presentations made him one of the best-known forecasters of the
1970s, first at ABC's Chicago affiliate and then as the first weather
anchor of "Good Morning America. " But for all his bluster, Coleman
was a consummate weather geek whose maps teemed with activity.
He also made one long-range forecast that was right on target.
The public had an endless fascination for weather, and Coleman
realized it was waiting to be unleashed upon the new frontier of
cable television.
Thanks to channels like CNN, C-SPAN and Headline News, television
no longer had to dispense its content sequentially - entertainment
followed by news followed by more entertainment - but in parallel
streams, making it a continuous, on-demand information appliance.
Once people started getting used to this concept, the idea that
they would not only accept but also embrace an all-weather channel
became inevitable. So in 1982 Coleman, with the backing of Landmark
Communications, began acquiring state-of-the-art forecasting
equipment and people who could use it and present it on the air.
One of them was Mark Mancuso, at the time a mild-mannered
weatherman in Knoxville, Tenn. Coleman told him, "You're the 13th
person hired. I don't know if that's good luck or not."
As it turned out, it was good luck for Mancuso. (Coleman, on the
other hand, departed in 1983 under storm clouds, having racked up $ 7
million in operating losses in the network's first year.)
"I love weather and all the toys we have here," Mancuso said in
an interview from The Weather Channel's new super-cool forecast
center in Atlanta. "When you work in the smaller markets, you're
kind of limited by the equipment you have. And besides, you have all
these minds who know weather. Once I got associated with the people
around here, sucking all the information from them, I learned an
awful lot."
Calming information
The Weather Channel operates in one of three modes during its
22-hour programming day: local, nonlocal and "danger danger. " (From
2 to 4 a.m., the network repeats the 1 a.m. program twice.)
Every 10 minutes it airs the National Weather Service's local
forecast in each market where The Weather Channel is carried.
Meteorological data and music are fed to thousands of cable
franchises by satellite.
WeatherScope, the channel's every-half-hour program, gives a
summary of the nation's weather conditions. The two co-anchors on
camera take turns clicking and pointing through a series of maps,
zooming in on trouble areas. Trouble is invariably represented by
green and orange blotches that stutter-step across the TV screen.
"I remember when we started here, we had the radars with the
three-letter identifiers (for cities) and I took a look at all the
identifiers across the country and thought, 'My goodness, I'll never
learn these,' " Mancuso said. "Now I can spit out names of cities
and rivers and streams.
"Whenever geography comes up on 'Jeopardy,' I clean up."
There is something comforting about the ongoing parade of other
people's weather, the litanies of cities and rivers and streams, the
local forecast "on the 8s," that makes The Weather Channel a magnet
for more than just farmers and off-duty meteorologists.
Theresa Kereakes, a producer at music channel VH-1, has The
Weather Channel on in her office all day long. "It's my favorite
channel, for one reason - I am not aware of their (on-air people)
being 'personalities,' " said Kereakes, whose own network oozes with
personalities. "They're unobtrusive."
Even though several Weather Channel announcers, including
Mancuso, Declan Cannon and Will Annen, have been on camera since
1982, it's a testimony to their peculiar talent that most viewers
still can't match their names to their faces. Strange as it may
sound, their interchangeability has actually given them great job
security.
"There're really not a lot of big egos here," Mancuso said.
"There were people here in the past who had the big egos. They went
on to local markets."
On the local front
The Weather Channel mostly complements the weather presentations
seen on Kansas City's four local TV stations. Its 80-person
meteorological staff charts conditions and makes general forecasts
for North and Latin America. Local forecasts seen on The Weather
Channel, however, come straight from the National Weather Service.
Indeed, in the olden days, nearly everyone's local forecast came
by the same means. The government generated the forecasts, and TV weathermen read them.
There were some Faraday-like attempts to bring the arcane science
of meteorology to the people, but most TV weathermen at the time were
not meteorologists, they were "personalities. " Kansas City's
weathermen at the time included Fred Broski at Channel 5, who was
host of "Bowling for Dollars" on the side; the late Dick Hocter,
Kansas City's "weather proctor," at Channel 9; and Dan Henry at
Channel 4, who once told an interviewer, "I have 30 meterologists at
the National Weather Service working for me."
That has all changed, thanks to the same technological revolution
that has supplied The Weather Channel with those up-to-the-minute
maps and fancy graphics.
Fred Ostby, who directed the National Severe Storms Forecast
Center for 18 years, until its move earlier this year from Kansas
City to Norman, Okla., is now consulting and appearing on-camera at
The Weather Channel until the end of June and the severe storm
season.
"The day of a rip-and-reader or a pretty face just giving the
weather is no long operable," Ostby said. "There is so much
interpretation to be done. You look at Doppler radar - my goodness,
to sort out all the information and figure out what it all means -
that's why it's a competitive area for TV stations and why they all
want meteorologists."
Mike Thompson, Channel 4's chief meteorologist, called it "the
difference between having the mechanic tell you what's wrong with
your car as opposed to the receptionist."
One thing that has not changed is "danger danger" mode. When it
comes to issuing watches and warnings for severe weather, including
thunderstorms, tornadoes and hurricanes, the National Weather Service
is still the one that calls the shots; television follows its cue.
Here the role of technology has been crucial, according to Ostby.
In the late 1970s, fewer than half of all "strong tornadoes" had
been sighted early enough to be included in a tornado watch. "Over
the last 10 to 15 years, that has about doubled - it's (now) about 80
percent of the time," Ostby said.
Last weekend, when a severe thunderstorm was detected in Jackson
County, the Weather Service's Pleasant Hill regional office issued an
alert that was carried within minutes on six local stations as well
as The Weather Channel.
Lori Miller, Channel 41's new chief meteorologist, attributes the
shift to Kansas City's turbulent weather conditions.
"It's funny. I started out in the No. 98 market - Waco, Texas -
and that market was so weather-driven that they wouldn't think of
hiring anything less than a meteorologist," Miller said. "Then I
went to Miami, and they consider themselves a small Hollywood.
They're just into (weather) for entertainment. Same thing in Houston.
Some of the stations there still have guys who've been on the air 20,
30 years and don't know anything (about weather). They just rip and
read."
Does Miller watch The Weather Channel in her off hours?
"Sure. Especially when I'm at home on weekends," Miller said.
"I watch that like most people listen to their CDs. Especially if
I'm curious how my forecast is holding out."

Remote patrol

If you're wondering why the family of Martin Luther King Jr. is
now proclaiming the innocence of King's convicted killer, James Earl
Ray (above), "Turning Point" (9 tonight, Channel 9) offers a look
at the man most responsible for the Kings' change of heart - Ray's
lawyer William Pepper, who believes a government conspiracy did King
in. Host Forrest Sawyer dissects Pepper's case with the aid of
biographer David Garrow, who allows that the FBI was paranoid of
King, but not that paranoid. The hour ends with a confrontation
between Pepper and the Army colonel he says ordered King's killing.

Not all public television leaders are sold on commercial idea

A proposal began making the rounds this week on the East Coast
that, if accepted, would dramatically change the look of public
television. And it's getting radically different receptions at the
two ends of Missouri.
The idea floated by former PBS and NBC News president Lawrence K.
Grossman would allow public and hitherto noncommercial TV stations to
air commercials on Friday and Saturday nights as a supplemental
source of income.
The federal government would phase out grants to public stations
like KCPT, Channel 19, KMOS, Channel 6 in Warrensburg, and KTWU,
Channel 11 in Topeka, just as the public stations are about to be
stuck with a hefty seven- or eight-figure price tag for new digital
TV gear.
Grossman's plan is one way of addressing these budget concerns,
and among PBS stations like WTTW in Chicago and KETC in St. Louis
that support the proposal, it's worth pursuing.
"We have an obligation to look at any serious proposal that
comes along," said Michael Hardgrove, KETC's general manager.
Not this one, replied Bill Reed, Channel 19's general manager.
"You can't be, to paraphrase Lincoln, partly commercial and
partly noncommercial," said Reed, who worked for Grossman in the
1980s at PBS in Washington. "I've been in the business 30 years.
What's new? We've scrambled for money all of our lives. But with this
proposal we change the fundamental nature of our business."
Since 1984 underwriters have been allowed to run 15- and
30-second spots before and after programs, as the CIT Group does
locally before "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on Channel 19. These
aren't commercials per se, although viewers might have trouble
telling the difference.
Nor is this the first time PBS stations have flirted with
commercial programming. In 1982-83 a few stations were given
government approval to air limited advertising.
The report from that experiment said that "advertising benefits
would largely accrue mainly to VHF (channels 2-13) stations in major
markets. " That means stations like KETC in St. Louis - not KCPT or
KTWU or KMOS.
Supporters of Grossman's plan say they wouldn't go overboard with
commercials, because the lack of ad clutter is what attracts a highly
desirable audience - well-educated, upper-income professionals.
"I just don't buy the argument that, by definition, if you add
commercials you're going to downgrade the programming," said
Hardgrove.
Meanwhile, Congress is working on a partial funding solution of
its own. Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, chairman of the House
Subcommittee on Telecommunications, plans this month to reintroduce a
bill to set up a $ 2 billion to $ 3 billion trust fund that would
supply permanent funding to public TV stations - and get government
out of public broadcasting forever.
Unlike Grossman's advertising plan, the trust-fund proposal is
something Reed, Hardgrove, and most other PBS affiliates nationwide
can agree on.
In local news
The Ingalls family finally has returned to Kansas - Lawrence that
is. After leaving area airwaves six weeks ago after the format change
of Channel 50, repeats of "Little House on the Prairie" began
airing this week on KMCI, Channel 38, at 10 a.m. weekdays.
The debut of Topeka's all-digital cable service, All TV, has been
postponed for another month for manpower reasons. TCI of Kansas
general manager Drew Fleming said the 100-plus channels of All TV
won't be available till mid-July, because his staff is currently tied
up testing a new billing system.
E-mail: barnhart@kcstar.com.

Show me the funny: The agent in 'Jerry Maguire' makes the agent in 'Arli$ $ ' seem about as appealing as ... an agent

Arliss Michaels, the gladhanding sports agent who's yet to meet
the sticky situation he couldn't weasel out of, is back for a second
season of "Arli$ $ ," the adult comedy created by and starring Robert
Wuhl.
But Arliss is looking a little worse for the wear. During the
off-season, "Jerry Maguire" was released, a movie about a
gladhanding sports agent who is confronted with the one problem for
which he has no quick fix: his own lack of emotional honesty.
"Jerry Maguire" was produced by James L. Brooks, a sitcom
veteran who takes a great deal of care developing the professional as
well as personal lives of his characters. In the end, not only does
Jerry's top client help Jerry to become a better man, but Jerry helps
his client to become a better client.
No one, of course, is expecting Arliss to come to grips with his
intimacy issues; if he did, that would be the end of "Arli$ $ ."
But his shortcomings, and those of his supporting cast, are
simply not interesting enough to propel this show through another
dozen episodes. Arliss seems a little too much like Jerry's
ex-colleagues at the sports management firm, which raises the
question of how much pleasure there is to be had in watching an
unredeemed agent in all his venal glory.
Certainly no one in front of the camera seems to be having much
fun. The first celebrity cameo we see, featuring
ballplayer-turned-announcer Tim McCarver, is a stilted and dreary
scene. McCarver is admiring a new pitcher's sinker ball, even
suggesting that the ball is illegally greased to make it sink so
hard.
"Spit, Vaseline, K-Y, hey nowadays, so long as our team wins,
who cares? " McCarver tells Arliss, adding this incongruent remark:
"Great country, isn't it?"
It's not quite as unsettling as the episode last season in which
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones appeared in about a point-shaving
scheme, but it's close.
Tonight's episode concerns a baseball player who thinks his wife
may be cheating on him. He confides this to Arliss while getting a
lap dance from a topless woman in a strip joint. And if that's your
idea of humor, then read on.
The spreadsheet joke is back again this season; that's where we
see more money being dumped into the client's discretionary fund to
cover yet another indiscretion. Arliss's tiny supporting cast - Jim
Turner ("The Ref") and Sandra Oh ("Double Happiness") - is mostly
wasted on these and other low-grade high jinks.
Much like the recent HBO movie "Weapons of Mass Distraction,"
the writing on "Arli$ $ " goes beyond cynical; it's just plain snide.
When Arliss is heard, in a voiceover, spouting a timeless aphorism of
sports management, you can be sure that something is happening
on-screen that directly refutes it.
The subplot in the second episode, airing June 24, involves the
real general manager and former head coach of the San Francisco
49ers, Carmen Policy and Bill Walsh. It ends with a decent joke about
the Kansas City-San Francisco rivalry, with the punchline delivered
by the old silver-haired wizard himself.
But if "Arli$ $ " is trying to be worldly wise in the spirit of
"The Larry Sanders Show," it fails.
Wuhl's character isn't invested with the dualism that makes Garry
Shandling's Larry (and for that matter, Jeffrey Tambor's Hank) so
loathsomely appealing. Larry's producer Artie (Rip Torn) once told
him, "You're like one of those creatures out of Greek mythology -
half man, half desk!"
By contrast, Arliss is all deal. Big deal.

Take note

Disputed title
Have you noticed that, in recent on-air promotions, CBS has been
dropping the words "Texas Ranger" from its Saturday-night action
series starring Chuck Norris (right)?
The revision comes at an inopportune time for CBS, which has been
defending itself against charges that it's become an old-folks
network.
But if the network is trying to appeal to a younger crowd, why
are they promoting a show known simply as "Walker"?

For a sampling of this Nostalgia, just disable your cable

Kansas City was graced this week with a new cable channel, one
aimed at viewers who still enjoy watching Loretta Young as she walks
through her fancy door and John Houseman as he hectors his law
students on "The Paper Chase."
It's called Nostalgia Television and here's all you have to do to
see it:
First, pull the cable out of the wall. (If you're one of those
gentler technophile sorts, you may use your remote control to disable
it.)
Now tune in Channel 35. If that doesn't look too hot, try Channel
48. Choose the sharper image. Adjust your antenna - if you can still
find it after all these years - and voila!
That's right, Nostalgia is a cable channel, but you can only get
it over the airwaves. It was being broadcast this week over two
low-power stations purchased Wednesday by Minneapolis-based
ValueVision Inc.
ValueVision and rival Home Shopping Network utilize low-power, or
LPTV, stations to extend their empires into markets that haven't
picked them up on cable. There are 1,950 LPTV stations in the
country, many of them spread over vast rural areas. Because they are
a special category of stations, most are not carried on cable systems
and are usually ignored by all but the unwired.
Locally LPTVs are seen on channels 26, 35 and 48. The Home
Shopping Network airs on 26 and, until last week, ValueVision was
seen on 35 and its new twin station, 48, which signed on in May.
But instead of ValueVision, viewer Charles Obermeyer pulled in
Nostalgia this week on his non-cable-equipped TV set.
"I was auto-programming my TV and all of the sudden it
appeared," said Obermeyer, who lives near the Plaza. The scanner on
his TV set pulled in a stronger signal at Channel 48. Just a few
miles north at The Kansas Star's building at 18th and Grand, Channel
35 was stronger.
"It's fun stuff," said Obermeyer. "I enjoy the programs they
put on."
Besides reruns, Nostalgia, which TCI in Johnson County dropped
last year, airs original programs, including a daily call-in show on
personal finance, an interview show with ex-Gerald Ford aide Ron
Nessen, and "The Real Me," a kind of first-person "Biography."
ValueVision's vice president for broadcasting, Mike Jones, was
faintly mortified to hear his newly acquired LPTV stations were not
showing the company line.
"I don't know anything about Nostalgia being on 35," Jones said
Friday. "I was told that both stations were broadcasting and that 35
definitely had ValueVision on it."
So if it's good old-fashioned television you want, tune in - and
we mean this the good old-fashioned way - channels 35 and 48. But
hurry. This may be a limited time offer!
So did KCPT, Channel 19, do the right thing when it declined to
air the pre-Tony Awards broadcast, "Broadway '97," from PBS last
weekend and instead put on a triplecast of "This Place Called
Home," the new TV special by Kansas City Star columnist Charles
Gusewelle?
KCPT thinks it did, and it has about a hundred thousand reasons
to back up its claim.
Sunday's back-to-back showings of "This Place Called Home"
resulted in $ 50,000 in phoned-in pledges during the broadcast. When
pledges from Saturday's premiere, and an encore presentation of
Gusewelle's "A Great Current Running," are included, the specials
raised more than $ 99,000 - "by far the largest amount for any
program in our history," said KCPT general manager Bill Reed.
Reed, who received "maybe four complaints" about the pre-Tony
omission, said PBS had not notified KCPT of the Tony plans until long
after the station had committed that time to Gusewelle.
"In hindsight I'm certainly sorry we didn't tape it and show it
later. We're a little upset at PBS about this," said Reed, who
promised to show the broadcast in future years should the network
decide to make it an annual event.
Talk back to your TV! Dial 889-7827 and press TVKC (8852) or
e-mail: barnhart@kcstar.com.

The city's vintage residential areas are long on history and character

ST. LOUIS - I am strolling through Tower Grove Park on a gorgeous
weekday afternoon in the heart of Missouri's largest city. I've
forgotten my hat, and if I'm not careful, the premier Victorian park
in the United States will very likely charm the socks off me as well.
Created in 1867 by one of the town's fathers, Henry Shaw, Tower
Grove Park is a living, oxygenating symbol of the St. Louis that once
was and, thankfully, is becoming anew. Shaw took this 40-square block
patch of prairie and filled it with more than 8,000 trees, seven
miles of meandering footpaths and delightfully oddball architecture -
including a set of faux ancient ruins and a bandstand surrounded by
busts of the great European composers.
Even if you're a St. Louis native, or you go there often, Tower
Grove Park is probably something of a unexpected pleasure. The travel
books would rather steer you to the city's more famous outdoor
venues: Forest Park, where much of the 1904 World's Fair took place,
and the Missouri Botanical Garden, another Shaw creation just to the
north of Tower Grove Park and a magnet for horticulturalists around
the world.
Likewise, out-of-towners tend to make a beeline for the
waterfront, close to the Arch, the riverboats, Busch Stadium and
Soulard, the home of Budweiser. (Soulard, with its jazz cafes,
eclectic antique shops and historic farmers market, is arguably St.
Louis's hottest neighborhood.) And at one time, perhaps, that
would've sufficed for the tourist.
Today, however, many of the older neighborhoods that once saw
their fortunes ebb, as its denizens pushed west to greener pastures
in the suburbs, are alive and kicking. Residents old and new, people
who equate venerability with virtue, give these places - the Hill,
University City, Central West End and Grand South Grand among them -
their own unique attractions and character.
"More than most American cities, St. Louis has experienced the
rise and fall and rise again of neighborhoods," writes Barringer
Fifield in his indispensable 1987 walking guide, Seeing Saint Louis
(Books & Books; Washington University).
Walking, in fact, was exactly how I saw much of St. Louis this
visit - simply hoofing it, city block after cityblock, past flora and
fauna, retail and restaurant.
When I wasn't on foot, I was on board the city's 4-year-old light
rail system, MetroLink, that runs 17 miles from Lambert Airport past
all of the downtown attractions, and across the Eads Bridge into
Illinois. One could also say, of course, that MetroLink runs from
Illinois to the airport, but that misses the point of this latter-day
streetcar, which pulls people into the core of the city rather than
push them out, as the highways and early streetcars of St. Louis once
did.
Now, thanks to public funds and private efforts, the rails are
returning to many of the neighborhoods they once served. But this
time, their purpose is twofold: not only as an alternative to cars
for local commuters but as the official tourist shuttle of St. Louis.
MetroLink stops at all three downtown sports venues, the Arch (at
Laclede's Landing), and Forest Park (home to the St. Louis Zoo as
well the St. Louis art and Missouri history museums).
MetroLink's rails were laid in existing right of way, much of it
formerly owned by the Terminal Railroad Association. This has helped
keep the system's costs down - by public transit standards, MetroLink
was a bargain - which is probably why the city's western and southern
sections are now clamoring for the line to be extended to their
neighborhoods.
For the out-of-towner, MetroLink outside of the downtown area
poses a moderate but not undaunting challenge. The train does not
penetrate the neighborhoods it serves so much as skirt them. At the
Central West End station, for instance, you're dropped off below
street level in the midst of two medical centers. Bring a street map
and be ready to walk anywhere from a few blocks to half a mile.
Fit to be tied
Seeking a more permanent reminder of my visit than a sunburn, I
exited Tower Grove Park at its southeast corner and discovered one of
St. Louis' latest renascent districts, Grand South Grand.
Essentially a row of ethnic eateries and urban shops, Grand South
Grand offers the best Thai and Vietnamese restaurants in St. Louis,
according to a recent newspaper's reader poll. But I was drawn to
Siete Mares, a restaurant whose north wall is festooned with mementos
from Nicaragua, co-owner Sonja Trogler's home country. Even though I
accidentally ordered the repochetas for lunch - the Nicaraguan
version of grilled cheese sandwiches - they were redeemed by the
flavorful salad and rice on the side.
At the Vintage Haberdasher, a men's and women's resale shop, I
found dozens of excellent vintage neckties. The store's owner, Joile
Mackney, said she had operated a vintage shop for 11 years in Soulard
before coming here.
"I keep a lot of the same customer base because it's close by,"
said Mackney, who moved after losing her lease in Soulard. "It was a
hard decision. I absolutely loved Soulard, but there wasn't anyplace
with the space that I needed."
A better location for resale than Soulard? I asked. The store's
manager, who helped me pick out a dandy gold-on-brown cravat, circa
1960, shrugged and said, "I guess Grand is coming back."
Call me a cab
One neighborhood that didn't come back so much as stubbornly
refuse to go away is the Hill, a heavily Italian enclave perched on a
modest plateau in the city's southern section.
The Hill is one of two neighborhoods I visited (University City
being the other) that are not really navigable except by car or cab.
And provided you don't get the driver who took me to the Hill - the
surliest I've encountered in all my years cabbing around Chicago and
New York - you'll find this a wholly satisfying side trip to an
old-fashioned, unmeltable ethnic base.
Originally designed as temporary housing for Italian immigrants
who started clustering here in the 1890s, the houses on the Hill are
no great shakes architecturally, until you begin to look at them in
their aggregate. There they are, block after block of tiny brick
estates with their swatch of lawn (many of the yards are watched over
by Blessed Virgin Mary statuettes), and all of them in astoundingly
good upkeep. Walk around long enough and you'll see residents out on
their stoops, sweeping them off.
Despite numerous attempts to steamroll its residents - running an
interstate right through the neighborhood, as Interstate 44 does
here, is a tactic too often used in the name of progress - the Hill
survives. More than that, it thrives, having long ago learned to use
its isolation and homogeneity to great advantage.
I followed my nose into DiGregorio's grocery, one of several
excellent Italian food shops on the Hill, where I almost grabbed a
$ 10 replica of the Italian Immigrants statue that sits outside St.
Ambrose Church, the area's spiritual anchor. I did, however, pick up
some handmade pasta made just down the street at the Sacred Heart
Villa.
My next stop was at a bakery - again, there are several to choose
from, and St. Louisans each seem to have their favorite - and had a
sfogliatelle that tided me over the rest of the morning. The Hill's
restaurants are widely respected, if not especially revered; that
distinction goes to Tony's, a spendy Italian restaurant downtown. Then again, the modest shops and residences on the Hill seem more
worthy of admiration than adulation. Besides, where else but on the
Hill can you step out from dinner and stroll over to an outdoor bocce
garden, just in time for league play?
Found my thrill
One part of St. Louis that is definitely getting its due is
University City, also known as the Loop, northwest of Forest Park and
just north of the campus of Washington University. In a town where
sensible, if not sturdy housing prevails (even the garages are made
of brick), the cafes, galleries and entertainment offerings along
Delmar Boulevard provide a welcome burst of bohemia.
During the summer months University City restaurants - Ethiopian,
Lebanese, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean and Greek - open up to sidewalk
patrons. Dine there and perhaps your table will rest atop one of the
bronze stars that compose the "St. Louis Walk of Fame," every bit
as cheesy and arbitrary as its Hollywood counterpart (a star for
Scott Joplin, sure, but Marlin Perkins?).
University City is also home to the original Saint Louis Bread
Company - yes, it really did start with one store - and the newly
refurbished Tivoli Theater, a lustrous showcase for the arthouse
genre of movies it carries. These two establishments, the premium
eatery and the indie theater, perhaps best characterize the
transformation of "U City" from a marginal neighborhood into one
targeted to the well-funded alternative set.
"When we first got here, there were an awful lot of vacant
storefronts and a real problem with absentee landlords," said Alan
Suits, who has owned and operated the Coyote's Paw Gallery just down
Delmar from the Tivoli for the last 14 years. Now the absentees have
been rooted out and there's been "a precipitous drop in petty
crime," according to Suits.
"There are only one or two chain stores on this strip," he
added. "People here are fiercely committed to keeping businesses
private."
Except for the St. Louis Bread guy, right?
Suits laughed and recounted the time, several years ago, when the
store's founder came by his gallery and asked Suits if this would be
a good place to set up shop. "And I said, 'Can I buy stock in it?
I'll take all you've got! ' "
Aaron Barnhart, a veteran walker of Chicago's neighborhoods
before moving to Kansas City, is The Star's television writer.
Going somewhere
Getting around
MetroLink: The 4-year-old rapid transit line connects Lambert-St.
Louis International Airport to popular destinations. Visitors can
park and ride from the airport, Forest Park and other stations.
Ignore all the confusing buttons on the MetroLink ticket machines
and choose either the one-day ($ 3) or three-day ($ 7) pass. Both
include unlimited train rides and bus transfers. MetroLink
information is available at (314) 231-2345.
Shuttle Bug: You can catch a brightly-painted red bus called the
Shuttle Bug at the Forest Park stop every 15 minutes. The eastbound
shuttle weaves its way through the park, stopping at all the
attractions, arriving 23 minutes later at the majestic St. Louis
Cathedral and its 80,000 square feet of mosaic in the Central West
End.
Buses: Tower Grove Park and the Botanical Garden are best reached
by car or bus. From the Central West End MetroLink station, catch a
No. 13 bus heading south on Euclid and tell the driver where you want
to get off.
The neighborhoods
The Hill: Squeezed into a few blocks west of Kingshighway and
south of Interstate 44, the Hill is brimming with restaurants,
bakeries and local pride. I took lunch at Adriana's (Shaw and
Hereford), and other goodies from DiGregorio's grocery (Marconi and
Daggett) and the Missouri Baking Co. (Wilson and Edwards).
Forest Park and Central West End: An urban tandem, one supplies
scenery and popular attractions, the other a place to unwind
afterward. The area is navigable by MetroLink and shuttle (see
above). You can also walk north on Euclid from the MetroLink station.
You'll pass the Sunshine Inn, the city's top-rated vegetarian
restaurant, north of Forest Park Blvd. (314-367-1413) In a few more
blocks you'll hit the heart of the neighborhood at Maryland.
University City: No visit to St. Louis' funkiest strip would be
complete without a burger at Blueberry Hill (6504 Delmar,
314-727-0880) and a slice of the original Saint Louis Bread Co. (6309
Delmar, 314-726-6644). But a smorgasbord of ethnic varieties is here
too, including Japanese restaurant Seki (6335 Delmar, 314-726-6477)
and the innocuously named U City Grill (6696 Enright, 314-721-3073),
which serves Korean food.
Grand South Grand: Much as the Central West End and Forest Park
are joined at the hip, so are this neighborhood and Tower Grove Park.
King & I (Thai; 3157 S. Grand, 314-771-1777) and Pho Grand
(Vietnamese; 3191 S. Grand, 314-664-7435) lead the list of Asian
eateries. There's also Nicaraguan food at Siete Mares (3204 S. Grand,
314-776-7074) and scrumptious cakes at Dickmann's Boulevard Bakery
(3139 S. Grand, 314-773-7585).
Information
The St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission hot line is (800)
916-0040. Call and request a "Great Getaway Packages" guide, a
Multicultural Guide, a MetroLink map and/or Visitors Guide.
(CORRECTION: Because of a reporter's error, an article Sunday in the Travel section described St. Louis as the largest city in Missouri. St. Louis is second-largest, behind Kansas City.)

The warm complications of'Home': KCPT documentary with Star columnist wasn't easy, but it tells a moving tale of how Kansas City came to be

Practically from the moment Charles Gusewelle found himself in
the television business - the happy result of a chance encounter at a
dinner party five years ago - he knew he wanted to make a documentary
about Kansas City.
So last September, he and his producers at KCPT, Channel 19, sat
down to view other projects similar to the one he had in mind - and
winced.
"I looked at about a dozen of these pieces, most of them made
by public television stations around the country, and most of them
were frank boosterism," Gusewelle, who by day is a columnist at The
Kansas City Star, said in an interview. "Most of them were just a
pastiche of images, with narration flung under them as a caption.
"The only time they came alive was when people - living people
- spoke of memories, spoke of things they had seen. So that's how we
decided to approach the piece."
Sounds simple enough. Yet viewers who tune in at 7 tonight to
"This Place Called Home," on KCPT, Channel 19, may not immediately
recognize what a tall order Gusewelle wrote for himself, his
producer-editor Mike Murphy, and executive producer Randy Mason.
In a program that runs just one hour in length, the
recollections of three dozen lifelong Kansas Citians, are included -
the distillation of some 45 hours of interviews Gusewelle conducted.
They span from when the first wave of immigrants settled in the area
through Kansas City's wild years into World War II, and close on a
reflection from the late 1960s.
"I'm an amateur in this business," Gusewelle said. "We bit off
more complication than we should."
Yet if the anecdotes supplied by others give "This Place Called
Home" its charm, it is the sinewy narrative of Gusewelle, who grew
up at 50th and Euclid, graduated from the old Paseo High School and
joined The Kansas City Star fresh out of college in 1955, that gives
this program its character.
"This Place Called Home" probably would not have happened at
all had it not been for a dinner party in July 1992 at a friend's
home, where Gusewelle struck up a conversation with a newcomer to
town, who unbeknownst to him was the incoming president of KCPT, Bill
Reed.
Gusewelle had led a 2,800-mile expedition the previous year along
the Lena River in Siberia, and had brought with him - "almost as an
afterthought,"- a cameraman. The cameraman wound up shooting 57
hours of film from the journey.
"Charles and I started to have a chat, and he described to me
this trip he'd taken," Reed said. "I got real excited and I thought
he was going to say it was going to be this major commercial
television thing."
But to Reed's amazement, Gusewelle said he had already shopped a
highlight reel around and gotten nowhere. An impromptu screening was
hastily arranged for Reed, and that night he committed to the project
that became "A Great Current Running. " (An encore broadcast of that
1992 documentary will air at 8:30 tonight after "This Place Called
Home."
"With 'A Great Current Running' and this project and the next
project - which he'll do as soon as he recovers from this one -
Charles is just wonderfully suited to public television," Reed said.
Indeed, though Gusewelle is not the most natural television
performer, many viewers will instantly warm to his dry narration,
Murphy's elegant editing, and Kriss Avery's mellow soundtrack, all of
which follow the Ken Burns style that has become a template for
public-TV documentaries.
On camera, however, Gusewelle is occasionally made to wander
through parts of Kansas City he once knew, peeking in storefront
windows or strolling down neighborhood blocks in his Birkenstocks.
It's a conceit he carries out with all the enthusiasm of a man
looking for his fourth missing golf ball of the afternoon.
"I'm not pretty to look at," he conceded. "And it seems to
snatch the story back from the people who are telling it."
But Mason and Murphy prevailed on Gusewelle to do the standup
scenes because, as one of perhaps two or three easily identifiable
faces in "This Place Called Home," he would engage the viewers.
"And they told me that this was my story, too," Gusewelle said.
It is especially Gusewelle's story, for his narrative forms the
counterpoint to the mostly fond memories included in "This Place
Called Home," and it is Gusewelle's assuring voice that takes us
into the troubled waters of the city's past with a sense of purpose.
The story of the 1930s political machine presided over by Tom
Pendergast is soberly considered. A still shot of Pendergast's simple
gravesite is accompanied by a voice-over: "It's an abiding truth
that this is what power finally comes to," Gusewelle says.
Kansas City's years of segregation and racism are also reviewed,
though here Gusewelle steers clear of the political. He includes the
story of Max Bretton, the rabbi who went on to run the city's first
open restaurant, and uses sound bites to suggest that race hostility
was an aberration borne out of human meanness rather than systemic
evil. (Gusewelle told me his least favorite columns are the ones he
writes about politics.)
Viewer contributions
Even to a newcomer to Kansas City, the footage included in this
special seems nothing short of miraculous, bringing to life all kinds
of things long thought extinct.
The streetcars that once tottered down Troost and linked midtown
to Swope Park. Opening day for Monarchs baseball at 22nd and Brooklyn
and pony rides at the Plaza. The old Don Bosco Center, the jazz
clubs, the big flood. They're all here, thanks to dozens of viewers
who responded to Gusewelle's televised plea last fall for donations
of home movies and photographs of the Kansas City that once was.
"It has been a journey of discovery," Gusewelle said. "I'd
never set foot, for instance, on Strawberry Hill. Have you been over
there? It's a photograph taken in about 1910. The neighborhood is
stopped in time - workman's bungalows on steep hills, people still
living in the houses where they were born in 1904 - it's really a
lovely, interesting place. Now I've got friends down there, I can
walk in a dozen houses and some lady will call me 'honey' and hand me
cookies."
As valuable as making new friends has been for him, Gusewelle has
made an equally satisfying discovery in writing for television. After
more than 2,300 columns for print, he now must match his words with
the images choreographed by Murphy. It's a challenge Gusewelle
relishes.
"To have the chance," he said, "at about age 60, to explore a
whole new dimension of what you do with words has been an
exhilarating thing."

Logging the golden age of Kansas City TV keeps professor clicking

Remember the news with Randall Jessee? "Videosyncracies" with
Bob Kerr? Westerns with "Frito" Frank Feeley? Remember the flood of
'51 and the Bobby Greenlease kidnapping from TV?
If so, you likely recall many moments from the golden years of
WDAF, Channel 4, Kansas City's first and, from 1948 to 1953, only
television station. In the days before network programming dominated
local schedules, WDAF had the luxury of picking and choosing from
four networks' programs - or airing their own.
William J. Ryan, associate professor of communication at
Rockhurst College, remembers Kansas City's golden age of television
better than most, and he didn't even move to the area until 1970. As
founder of the Kansas City Broadcasting Oral History Project, Ryan
has spent the last 12 years interviewing the producers and
personalities behind WDAF and re-creating its history as a news
leader and pioneer in live coverage of breaking news and
entertainment.
Ryan recently contributed a chapter on WDAF to Television in
America: Local Station History from Across the Nation, published by
Iowa State University Press.
Started in 1948 by The Kansas City Star, WDAF was an antitrust
case waiting to happen (the government finally forced the paper to
sell Channel 4 in 1958). But Ryan also notes that two other media
players in town, radio stations KCMO and KMBC, were more reluctant
than the conservative Star to embrace TV, and that WDAF's William A.
Bates believed that the new medium could "contribute to the good of
our community" with "strong, socially oriented programming."
Ryan, who's written an unpublished manuscript on the history of
Kansas City broadcasting, said his work has produced more than 100
interviews for the oral-history project.
"They're often amazed that anyone would care," Ryan said of the
WDAF pioneers. "But the ones who have been (interviewed) are often
able to look back and say, 'Hmm, I guess there were some interesting
things that went on."In local news
Channel 19 is using this weekend's premiere of C.W. Gusewelle's
"A Place Called Home" (see cover story) to roll out encores of
other locally produced programs.
"Soul of the West," the video odyssey of Pembroke Hill teacher
Joe Walker along the trails of the Pony Express, will air at 5:30
p.m. today, followed by "A Place Called Home"; an encore of
Gusewelle's first special, "A Great Current Running"; and "Whizzo,
Ol' Gus And Me: The Lost History of Kansas City Kid Shows."
On Sunday afternoon, local fare begins at 2 with an episode of
"Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations," then "The Royal Years,"
"Remember Me, KC," another "Rare Visions" and back-to-back
repeats of "Home."
WDAF's weekend morning newscasts have a new anchor. Courtney
Maxwell comes to the station via WHO-TV in Des Moines to fill the
spot vacated by Heather McMichael, now a weekday co-anchor.
Fred Ostby, the former director of the National Severe Storms
Forecast Center here, has signed on as a consultant to the Weather
Channel at its broadcast center in Atlanta.
Kansas City's experiment in crime deterrence, dubbed "John TV"
(Wednesday mornings on Kansas City's government channel), is drawing
national notice. Last Friday the show, which airs pictures of people
caught soliciting prostitutes, was the lead topic on ABC's
"Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher."
One panelist, commentator Joseph Perkins, called it "a violation
of due process. " But humorist James Finn Garner looked on the bright
side. "It reinforces our feeling of community," he said. "People
are going to be sitting at home watching TV and saying, 'Hey, that's
my dentist! ' "
Hey, that's my TV columnist! Call him at 889-7827 and press TVKC
(8852), or e-mail: barnhart@kcstar.com.

Take note

Public TV scrutinized
Perhaps only William F. Buckley Jr. (right), one of the
best-known PBS personalities - and its most contrarian - would spend
a half-hour debating the necessity of the network on which his
program has appeared for 26 years.
"Firing Line" at 11 a.m. Sunday on KCPT, Channel 19, considers
the topic "Is PBS Still Necessary? " - with Buckley assuming the
negative.
This is a friendly exchange - one of the two affirmative
panelists is Henry Cauthen, the godfather of "Firing Line" - but
spirited nonetheless, as broadcasting's most elegant conservative
voice argues repeatedly for abolition of public funding for public
TV.