Country music joins The Mix atop KC radio

And the hits just kept coming for KMXV-FM (93.3) as it won the Kansas City radio ratings derby for the second quarter in a row. "The Mix" finished No. 1 in the Arbitron summer book despite a strong challenge from album rocker KQRC-FM (98.9). "The Rock" was tops in the Monday-Friday ratings, but "The Mix" had strong weekend ratings and by far the highest cumulative audience. After Kansas City's country stations swooned in the spring quarter ratings, Bob Zuroweste, who manages eight stations for Entercom including "The Rock" and WDAF-AM (610), told this column that country would be back. Well, country is back, but perhaps not as Zuroweste might have hoped. "Young Country" KBEQ-FM (104.3), which like "The Mix" is owned by Entercom's chief rival CBS-Infinity, rocketed from 10th to third overall. Shotgun Jeff Jaxon's afternoon show leaped from ninth to second, and morning man Randy Miller upped his ratings from fifth to third. Meanwhile, WDAF remained in fourth place. But there was consolation for Entercom. After being knocked out of the top spot in mornings this spring for the first time in memory, WDAF's David Lawrence returned to No. 1, edging out "The Rock's" Johnny Dare and Murphy Wells. "The Mix's" Kelly Urich was No. 1 in afternoons. Overall, 31.7 percent of listeners were tuned to Entercom-owned stations, while 22.5 percent were listening to CBS-Infinity stations. Complete summer radio ratings are posted on www.tvbarn.com. The Bliss rules You have to wonder at the inconsistent standards that led CBS to discipline former WDAF, Channel 4 news anchor Katherine Bliss this week for appearing in a testimonial ad for a Kansas City eye clinic. The ad, which first appeared in the Oct. 17 Star, featured Bliss, now an anchor at the Windy City's CBS-owned station, and included quotes attributed to her that praised the clinic's laser surgery. Bliss, who says she didn't receive payment for the ad and did it as a favor to a friend here, violated CBS policy on anchor propriety. That's right. CBS - the same company that allows Charles Osgood to preside over its "Sunday Morning" news program, while he hawks everything from FloNase to anti-snoring aids on his radio show - has a rule against anchor testimonials. CBS also allows the anchors on its two all-news radio stations to read commercials but not its TV anchors. And apparently not even in a market where the anchor no longer works. WGN drops WB WGN, the Chicago superstation carried on Kansas City cable systems, stopped airing programs from the WB network earlier this month. This means Kansas City viewers will no longer have a fallback channel for those nights when the local WB affiliate, KSMO, Channel 62, pre-empts WB shows to carry University of Kansas basketball games. WGN is owned by the Tribune Co., which also has a share in the WB. Tribune Co. originally agreed to carry the WB network so that cities that didn't have a local WB affiliate would be able to see its shows (WGN is seen in 48 million homes outside the Chicago area.) But with WB affiliates now in nearly all the 100 largest markets, WGN has agreed to become an independent station again. The locally pre-empted WB programs will air instead the following Sunday afternoon on Channel 62, according to Stu Powell, the regional director for Sinclair Broadcast Group, which oversees KSMO. To reach Aaron Barnhart, television writer for The Star, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com

'Nightline' spends a week in prisons for women

Ted Koppel has long been fascinated by the American criminal justice system. It's easy to see why. Compare incarceration and execution rates in the United States with other Western nations, and the contrast is stark (some would say appallingly so). Beginning tonight, "ABC News Nightline" (12:05 a.m., Channel 9), which has extensively covered issues of crime and punishment in the past, begins a six-night investigation of America's singular achievement in locking up more women than any other country in the world. Not only that, Koppel asserts, women are the fastest-growing category of prisoner in the United States. But are America's prisons - built traditionally and predominantly to handle male offenders - adequate for women? Once again, Koppel has chosen to find out more by spending some quality time on location, in this case at the California Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, Calif. (On a similar assignment a few years ago, Koppel spent the night at a North Carolina men's prison.) The six shows will air consecutively through next Friday. I've watched three and they show "Nightline" at its conscientious best. Koppel remains neutral on whether all of these women deserve to be behind bars - although he does keep bringing up, with some disdain in his voice, California's "three strikes" law that sends women to prison for life after three felony convictions. Rather, "Nightline" focuses on the conditions inside this women's prison - a 4-year-old facility that is already filled to nearly twice its supposed capacity - and lays bare how abysmal those conditions are. This raises two questions: If things are this bad here, how much worse are they at other women's prisons? And if so, are we doing these women a grave injustice sending them to these facilities in record numbers? In tonight's episode viewers learn 80 percent of the Chowchilla residents are there on drug-related offenses; 80 percent have been physically or sexually abused; 80 percent of them will be back in prison after release. We also learn about some of the differences between male and female prisoners, which will be drawn out on later nights. Next Tuesday's broadcast looks at the appalling state of health care inside the prison. One woman's breast cancer was allowed to metastasize because it took the prison's medical officers half a year to get her in for an examination. Also troubling is a pattern of sexual harassment by medical staff that, until "Nightline" began looking into it, had either not been reported to prison officials or was ignored by them. "The women here have been sentenced to forfeit their freedom," Koppel says. "Not their dignity, or their self-respect, or their health." The same, he need hardly have added, should apply to the nation's male prisoners as well. Just because you're not married to a county 4-H bread-baking champion (like I am) doesn't mean you have to miss out on the joys of creating your own loaves from scratch - without bread machines and without tears. Now you can invite a genuine Benedectine monk into your house on Saturdays and have him show you how. "Breaking Bread With Father Dominic," which debuts 10 a.m. Saturday on Channel 19, borrows from "The Frugal Gourmet" in its emphasis on the spirituality of creating wholesome things to eat. Despite the uncanny resemblance (see photo), Father Dominic is not my brother. >>>

Remote patrol

In hindsight, perhaps the WB network should've scheduled its first-ever awards show for a Friday night. "The WB Radio Music Awards" (7 p.m., Channel 62) will pre-empt one of the network's hottest shows, "Charmed," to bring us David Bowie, Garth Brooks, 'N Sync and a gaggle of flavor-of-the-month artists. Meanwhile, the WB's Friday lineup is hurting, with the promising cartoon "Mission Hill" already put on the shelf. >>>

Forecaster prepares for fight of his life

You don't have to tell a weather forecaster to take life one day at a time. KSHB-TV meteorologist Gary Lezak now has a sobering reminder of that truth when he wakes up in the morning. He is surviving cancer.

This summer Lezak was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer after he found a tumor the size of a large marble in his left arm. Doctors later determined Lezak's cancer to be especially virulent and prescribed an aggressive course of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Those treatments begin next week when, over the course of four or five days, Lezak will be intravenously fed several powerful chemical cocktails aimed at killing any cancer cells that might still be in his body. He will lose his hair, his immune defenses and as much as 30 pounds during the ordeal, but he plans to show up to work and do the weather on Channel 41 when he can. Once it is all over, he and his doctors are hopeful about the long-term forecast.

"This is insurance for me to be cured," said Lezak of the chemotherapy and radiation. "My attitude's pretty good, but some things I know are going to be pretty hard." KSHB is planning to reveal Lezak's cancer to viewers on its evening newscasts today. As his treatment progresses, Lezak said he will give brief updates on his condition, lest viewers become alarmed by his appearance.

Besides his baldness - Lezak does not plan to wear a toupee - he will begin to look noticeably gaunt from the weight loss. "Aside from the fact that people are going to be wondering where Gary is, letting people know what he's going through will hopefully spark some people to get a checkup that they might not otherwise," KSHB news director Laura Clark said. "I think it will also be helpful to Gary. We'd love to have him around."

The chemotherapy doses are so strong that the 37-year-old native Californian, who says he has never spent a night in a hospital, will be an inpatient for a week during every round of treatment. Lezak admits the thought of making himself that sick terrifies him. But, he adds quickly, it is comforting to know that he found the cancer early, in a place where it would have been hard for the tumor to hide.

Mysterious lump

Lezak had run across the lump in his left arm, just above the elbow, earlier this year. But it wasn't until an in-line skating accident in July in which he broke his right wrist that he had the lump checked.

"The third time I went in to get my cast replaced, I was concerned because I felt like the thing in my other arm was growing," said Lezak. "So I brought it to the doctor's attention, and I'm glad I did."

Like the wisps of a small tornado tucked inside a dense storm system, it took a specialist, and the right radar, to identify the tumor. That specialist was Howard Rosenthal of the Mid-America Sarcoma Institute, which operates through Trinity Lutheran Hospital and Menorah Medical Center. Rosenthal eventually diagnosed Lezak with a form of extraskeletal osteogenic sarcoma, a rare bone cancer that grows away from the skeleton.

Only about 450 new cases are reported each year in the United States, said Rosenthal, and it's not known why people get the disease. Until 1979, extraskeletal sarcomas were difficult to treat, and only about 17 percent of patients survived five years, according to Rosenthal. But the development of new chemotherapy and surgical treatments have made survivors out of the majority of patients.

Survival rates now range from 60 percent to 90 percent after five years. And because of the size, type and location of Lezak's tumor, his survival chances are very high, Rosenthal said. Most of these sarcomas occur in the thigh and are much larger than the 3-centimeter tumor removed from Lezak's arm last month. "The average size, in all honesty, is cantaloupe size," said Rosenthal. "I've taken them out when they're watermelon size."

Despite the early detection of Lezak's tumor, a panel of sarcoma specialists recommended radical therapy to go after any minute traces. 'It is difficult' Lezak said he was "very depressed" when he learned the results of the panel review. Then he called on KMBC anchor Larry Moore, who fought his own high-profile battle with cancer eight years ago. "His first question was, 'Is it very difficult? ' " recalled Moore. "That's the first question I usually get, and I've learned there's no sense in lying about it. It is difficult. It's the most challenging thing you'll go through in life. But you can get through it. You can have a quality of life, and I'm proof of it."

Besides early detection, Moore says there are two other keys to surviving cancer. One is getting second and third opinions from doctors, which will help a patient maintain "psychological stamina" under the rigors of treatment. The other is support - "from family, friends and faith," said Moore. "Without that, you can't make it."

Lezak will be getting a lot of support. His parents are coming into town to be with him during the first round of treatment, and, of course, he will has his faithful and famous companion, Windy.

"She'll be very good therapy for me," Lezak said. Even before his medical problems arose, this had been a high-profile year for Lezak. Yet he has only spent about three months of it on camera. He was obliged to sit on the sidelines for six months because of a noncompete clause in his contract with WDAF-TV, the station he left to take the lead forecaster's job at KSHB.

During that time, KSHB cleverly kept Lezak's name in play with a series of advertisements framed around his dog. Rosenthal and Moore say that going to work will help boost Lezak's spirits. Even now the weather is, as it has always been for Lezak, a welcome distraction. "When I'm working here, as we are today, thinking about this extremely long dry spell we're in, I can get away from thinking about it," said Lezak.

"That's all going to change next Monday. "But I've already decided that when I have a bad day, those are going to be good days. And when I have a good day, those will be the really great days." In the meantime, said Lezak, "I would like to have as much support as I can. I think the more positive energy I can get from outside and from family and friends, the better I will feel."

New on the tube TV critic Aaron Barnhart rates tonight's show

The Barnhart scale, from best to worst: Don't Miss, Has Potential, Needs Show Doctor, D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival). D.O.A. "Time of Your Life" This dreadful, brain-damaged vehicle for "Party of Five" star Jennifer Love Hewitt tries to turn her into the next Ally McBeal - and fails spectacularly. Laden with idiotic banter and absurd story turns, this show, which already has been overhauled once (hence the late starting date), now seems unsalvageable. Hewitt blows into New York and immediately begins blabbing to anyone who will listen to her story about searching for identity and meaning and her unknown father. The first stranger she tells this to is a foreigner; he thinks she wants to have sex with him. I guess that's supposed to be funny. In "Ally McBeal" style, Hewitt walks into a men's room to confront the man she thinks is her dad; in another, she fakes being a cabaret singer to get into a fancy ball. And meanwhile, she just keeps blurting out whatever's on her mind. I guess this is supposed to establish Hewitt's character as irrepressible. Irritating is the better word for it. At one point she says, "I'm sorry, this is very inappropriate and embarrassing," as though summing up this whole sorry program. (7 p.m. Mondays, Channel 4) For full coverage of the fall season, visit the TV Barn Web site www.tvbarn.com